Quinoa And Sun Dried Tomatoes Recipe

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Hello and welcome to Freshly Served, the healthy vegan cooking show. I’m Heather and tonight we’re gonna make a zucchini dish with some sun dried tomatoes, it’s gonna be really simple.

And what I’m gonna do is take this video as an opportunity to go over how to cook quinoa because this is a grain that a lot of people have not seen before, they don’t know how to cook it. They sometimes have difficulty with it.

So, let’s start from the quinoa and I’ve got about three quarters of a cup here, I don’t have a full cup, I didn’t realize I was this low on quinoa but anyway it will work so you take the dry quinoa, put it in a pot and then put some water on it.

At this point you don’t need to use filtered water because we’re going to rinse the quinoa and what I do to rinse my quinoa is I get my hand right in the pot and just kind of massage the grains a little bit.

And what this does is there’s a coating on quinoa that’s a little bit different from other grains. Most grains you should wash just to get any dirt or dust or whatever from being stored off but with quinoa there’s a coating that gives it a little bit of a bitter taste.

And so if you rinse the quinoa like I’m doing right now, it takes away that slight bitter coating and it makes it taste better.

So once you give it a good rub, all you do and I just stick my hand in the water and shake it to get the little quinoa bits off so once you give it a rinse you’ll see the water is a little bit cloudy and then all I do is just pour it off like this. I don’t use a strainer or anything.

Any grains that are floating are ones that are not fresh and so don’t worry about losing them and don’t worry about getting every last drop of water out of there. There we go! There’s our rinse quinoa.

So now what we’re gonna do is add two parts water for every one part quinoa that you’ve got there and this time you want to use the filtered water so I’ve got three quarters of a cup here so I’m gonna add a cup and a half.

This ratio is the key to getting your quinoa cook correctly. If you don’t use the right ratio of water, here’s some from my mug. The quinoa will either be too dry and will not cook properly or it will be too wet and soggy and it won’t be very appetizing.

Ok! so the last thing you want to put in this pot before you put on to cook is a dash of salt and this is not to help the water boil faster, it’s not for flavor, it is to help the quinoa cook. Any grain you want to add a bit of salt because it helps the cooking process.

Ok! So, quinoa is in our pot here. I’m going to put this on the burner, turn it on high to get up to a boil, let it boil, like let it come right up to a boil and then turn it down to minimum and let it simmer.

And quinoa is only gonna take about twenty to thirty minutes to cook. Depends on how much you have in your pot. With three quarters of a cup is probably gonna take close to twenty minutes. If you are cooking two cups of dried quinoa it will probably take close to half an hour.

So there you go, that’s all you have to do to have a perfect quinoa, just leave it alone. Don’t stir while it’s cooking otherwise you will interfere with the steam that’s cooking the grain.

While the quinoa is cooking you can get your other vegetables ready and we’re gonna use sun dried tomatoes in this recipe. What I like to use is the actual dried ones rather than the ones in oil.

But in order to soften them up what I do is stick them in a bowl and pour some water on them and then just leave them to soak while I cut out the rest of my vegetables.

So I’ve got some onions diced here, I’ve got a pan that’s heating up over here and then I’ve got my zucchini and all you do with these guys is I’m just gonna chop each ends off and you can chop them in whatever shape you like.

When your pan gets nice and hot, you’re gonna add just a touch of olive oil as always you don’t need very much then toss your onion into the pan and just soothe it lightly until it softens.

When the onions have softened and they’re looking a little bit translucence, mines have starting to brown a little bit but you don’t need to wait that long then you will add the zucchini to the pot/pan whatever you want to call it.

Throw that all in, probably not across the kitchen would probably good. Stir it around so that it mixes in with the onions and then you want to let those zucchini’s cook so you don’t want to stir it so often.

Once those zucchini start glistering with sweat your gonna add your herb which I’m using basil, love the combo of basil and sun dried tomatoes with zucchini. Give it a little pinch between your fingers to release the flavor.

Dry herbs don’t have much of flavor on their own. Stir that around to coat the vegetables then you’re going to add some salt. The purpose of the salt is to help the zucchini cook so it’s gonna draw the moisture out of the zucchini and soften them.

So get that stirred right around, if you like you can add a little bit of black pepper and then just let this cook until the zucchini are really nice and soft.

Checking in on our quinoa, now I’m really lucky that I’m gonna have some very fashionable pink glass pot and I can look at the outside and see if there’s any moisture left down at the bottom which I can see that there isn’t.

But if you’re not quite as lucky as me what you can do is take the top off, put a knife in here, hold the quinoa apart and see if there’s any moisture at the bottom.

Ok! This is important because the steam is what’s keeping the quinoa nice and fluffy if you stir the quinoa it’s going to get really gluey and gooey unless it’s perfectly done.

But you can see that there’s no moisture left here and if I was to judge the fluffiness with my knife or fork, perfectly cooked!

Zucchini are softening up beautifully and then finishing touches, I’m gonna get these sun dried tomatoes out of the water and I use to struggle with the knife cutting these guys they’re pretty tough until I realize I can just use my kitchen scissors.

Think of them as so much more fun, try it but you might need that you make sure that your using scissors that are specifically for food, you don’t want to be cutting your sun dried tomatoes with the same scissors that are cutting your kids construction papers or whatever.

Alright! Get those puppies in there and then if you like and I do because I love it, you can finish it off with a little drizzle of balsamic vinegar. Just for a little bit of added flavor.

Stir that around and it sizzle. Let it seal around your zucchini, smells so good! Get the heat off, get some quinoa on your plate, top it off with your beautifully seasoned zucchini and sun dried tomatoes and you got yourself a lovely healthy vegan meal.

You can find the recipe at HealthyVeganRecipes.net. I’m Heather and this is Freshly Served.