Vegan Quinoa Recipe With Creamy Garlic Sauce

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Hello and welcome to Freshly Served, the healthy vegan cooking show. I’m Heather and tonight I’m going to make a creamy garlic sauce which I’m going to put over quinoa. You can put over any type of grain if you like though.

So what I’ going to do first is get the quinoa started. I’ve got a cup of quinoa, I’m gonna put in here. Quinoa is a grain that does not need to be rinse but you could if you like and like most other grains I’m gonna cook it two to one so I’m putting two cups of water in my one cup of quinoa.

I’m gonna give it a pinch of sea salt, cover it, bring it to a boil on the burner back there and as soon as it comes to a boil I’m gonna turn it down to minimum and let it simmer.

Quinoa is fairly fast cooking so it only takes about only 20 minutes to half an hour and if you have one of these guys flame tamer put it underneath, it will really help the cooking process.

A lot of people have problem in cooking quinoa and really it’s just about the right ratio of water to quinoa, little bit of salt to help the cooking process and then just letting it get right down to low in order to cook for the 20 minutes.

If you cook it to high, it’s gonna get mushy, if you leave it too long it will dry out and if you don’t cook it long enough it will also be mushy so it is a little bit particular but once you get use to it, no sweat.

So now that we got the quinoa going, let’s get started on our garlic sauce. So the base for my sauce is going to be zucchini and I’ve got some really beautiful yellow zucchini that I found this week.

I normally would just use green zucchini but because the yellow is there that’s what I’m going to do. So this is going into a blender which is necessary for this recipe because otherwise the zucchini will not be transform into liquid. Food processor is ok, a hand blender probably won’t be enough, you can try it but probably wind up with a bit of chunkiness at the end.

Ok, now I’m gonna use some coconut milk, this is not necessary but because I have some left from my dill dressing that I made for the cucumber salad the other day. I’m gonna use this and just use as much as you like. You probably gonna wind up by the end of this sauce using this whole half of can but I’m gonna start with that from now.

And you just want enough liquid so that it starts the zucchini blending so I’m gonna add a little bit of water here as well just to make sure it’s really good and liquid.

Ok! So I’ll start by putting that on the blender just for a couple of seconds and there’s where I’m at now, you can see that that’s pretty nice and liquid, it’s not totally smooth yet.

What I’m gonna add next is some onion, this is to bring more depth to the flavor. You need to add some form of onion here, it doesn’t need to be a yellow onion but you can put green onion or whatever you like but you need some member of the onion family in here otherwise it’s just gonna taste not sauce like and more like just pureeing vegetables like baby food. So give that another shot with the onions to get that all nice and, nice and blended.

Alright! We’re gonna like creamier over here, next thing I’m gonna add is the garlic since I’m calling this a garlic sauce, this is kinda the star of the show and I’m gonna go a little nuts on the garlic. Put in whatever you think you like.

And if you like a milder flavor you may want to roast this before you put it in. I’m putting it in raw. Garlic of course has many nutritional benefits among them antibacterial properties, antifungal and yeast is a fungus, a type of fungus so if you have any kind of yeast overgrowth garlic is helpful for that.

Also helpful of course in warding off vampires if that’s an issue for you and the list go on and on but anyway garlic fantastic! Also fantastic flavor so I’m putting the smuchness of the garlic as well as the garlic skin that I press in here.

Reason I’m pressing it even though I’m blending it is because getting a mouthful of garlic isn’t the most fun even for me and I love garlic so yes I am blending it but I’m gonna smush it up first in my garlic press to make sure that I don’t get a big chunk of garlic. Alright! So give that another run on the blender.

And if you give that a whirl it should smell like onion and garlic. Lovely! So next thing I’m gonna do is season this guy and I’m going to add some salt, some pepper, some nutmeg and some nutritional yeast.

Nutritional yeast is not absolutely necessary but it does really help in the taste of creaminess so if you have some I highly recommend throwing some in there. As you can see I never really measure too precisely. I just throw in what I think is appropriate for the amount of stuff that I have.

Nutmeg really just adds some depth of flavor and I don’t know, it really just brings things together so try to get some nutmeg in there. Give it one last whirl in the blender and we’re set to go as soon as the quinoa is cook.

Always a good idea when your finish making a sauce before you put it on your meal, give it a taste to make sure it has the right flavor. Oh! That got some garlic kick to it.

Now I put more in here than I put in the recipe. I think the recipe was probably more accurate, so what I’m gonna do is just add the end of this coconut milk to level things out.

The quinoa is cooked back here, I’m just gonna put some in a plate. Quinoa excellent source of protein, has a good balance of the different amino acids that you need for a healthy body and it taste really delicious, it has a kind of unique taste for a grain. A little bit nutty especially if you roast it beforehand.

And I’ve got my sauce here, I’m just gonna pour some of this over the quinoa and I added just a touch of balsamic vinegar to my sauce when I was playing around with the flavours when I had too much garlic in there and I really like the flavor that balsamic brings so I’m gonna add that to the recipe.

So there we go! This is also definitely excellent if you have some vegetables you want to throw on here, on top of the quinoa and then pour the sauce on top would be lovely.

So enjoy it however you have it. I’m gonna have this along with a green salad and enjoy your dinner.