Quinoa may be my new favorite grain of the moment. I can add it to my repertoire of go-to dish staples that include rice, risotto-y dishes, pasta, and couscous (more about couscous later). After watching it being used on the Food Network for years and struggling over how to properly pronounce it in public, Chris’s mother got some for us from the local grocery store and we finally had a chance to experiment with it.
Here’s a quick, fun, and light dish with ingredients that can easily be exchanged to make it unique to your taste preference. As a main dish it would serve approximately 4 people. The best part of this meal? Serve hot OR cold! (When cold it functions almost like a pasta salad). 15 min prep; 25 min cooking time
Quinoa- 2 cups (red or white will do)
Quinoa- 2 cups (red or white will do)
Cucumber/Onion- approximately 1 ½ full cups once combined. Easily add your favorite no-non-sense veggies, like carrots, celery, etc.
Shrimp- 1 cup of raw, uncooked shrimp (ours started off as the frozen but ez-peel kind). As you see, ours is generally larger- aesthetically it looked more appealing. Also, as the quinoa was the focus of this meal, we kept our protein limited to 1 cup between the 2 of us, but your mileage may vary.
Oil or butter – (minimal) to cook the shrimp.
Summery Zest- We used orange zest as well as lime to help bring out the clean flavors of the veggies and the grain.
Herbs to garnish- We picked Thyme, but anything that could be grown backyard in a garden should evoke the same outdoorsy nostalgia. Rosemary would probably be great (especially if you substitute the shrimp with some lamb or chicken).
4 cups of water- See ratio of water to quinoa below.
Chicken stock- in our case, we used chicken bouillon because we had run out of stock. Read the instructions on how many cubes to put in. Ours was 1 per every 2 cups.
Seasonings- Minimal as to not obstruct natural flavors. Salt/Garlic salt and pepper to taste.
This meal was created in the middle of winter. Granted, it’s not like this winter has been particularly cold or devastating…but in a season filled with overeating and being cooped indoors, this meal left us feeling full but amazingly light. Great for dieters who still want a satisfying meal.
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| Add four cups of water to a medium sized sauce pan and turn the heat on high. |
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| Add two cubes of your favorite chicken bouillon to the heating (boiling) water. |
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| Feel free to make as much Quinoa as you please, we decided on two cups (Quinoa to water ratio should be 1:2). Add once water/chicken stock is boiling, and keep an eye on it. Took us twenty minutes to cook. You can tell the quinoa will be done when it becomes clear and you can kind of see the germ within. |
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| Chop up 2-3 cups of your favorite vegetables, we had onion and cucumber. Mmm. |
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| Make sure to buy raw shrimp! Thaw, peel, and pat them dry before cooking. |
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| We only needed a little bit of oil for flavor. Lay the shrimp in the hot pan away from you so none of the hot oil splashes at you! |
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| You only need to cook the shrimp for a couple minutes on each side with medium-high heat. Feel free to season them to taste. |
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| Your Quinoa should be done by now! start layering your fresh veggies on top. |
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| Lay your shrimp on top of everything and start seasoning. We used some fresh orange zest. |
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| We were feeling crazy so we added some lime juice to the equation. |
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| The final product was crazy awesome. Light, fresh, summery, and easy! |
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| Sometimes nothing is better than blanched broccoli. Go ahead, let loose. We had broccoli on the side, but it would be a great addition to the actual meal as well. |
By the way, you can pronounce quinoa two ways: KEEN-WAH or KEEN-OH-WAH. So there you go.
