Rice Cooker Quinoa

2024-12-17T22:25:00-08:00 cook recipe

I made a quick "just kinda toss things together" late snack that I want to write down so I can remember it later (I mean, I'm also going to toss this into Paprika, but this way I can share it a little more easily).

Put all the Ingredients in the rice cooker, set to Quick (for me and my NS-ZCC10 model of Zojirushi's Fuzzy Logic cooker, follow your own model's instructions), and let the cooker do it's thing. While that's going, then it's time to cook the "optional" ingredients:

• Prep the onion and carrots.
• Heat a pan, add in the oil and do the normal thing for checking to see that everything's hot enough.
• Put in the onions, and add some salt. Give them a good couple minutes head start on the carrots.
• Once the onions have enouch color for you, mine were a good golden brown, add in the carrots. Get those going a bit, and then add in the sumac and chipotle powder.
• Add in the water, get it to a boil, cover and turn down the heat to just a simmer.
• Cook for 10-15 minutes, or until you hit your preferred doneness/texture on the veggies. Don't burn the onions (but if you do a little, it isn't the end of the world).
• Remove from heat, and add in the balsalmic vinegar.

Once both parts are done, add the veggies to the quinoa, stir in the nutritional yeast, and make any adjustments for salt/pepper.

Alterations/Extra notes

The Balti Seasoning is a spice blend from Penzy's.

I only had carrots on hand for veggies I wanted to use, but I could very much see adding in some peppers (bell, habanero, jalapeno, serrano, whatever your fancy, although sweet/fruity is a little more in style than vegetal tasting. mileage varies), and/or mushrooms. Garlic too, although I think I'd want some roasted garlic more than adding a couple cloves in the sauté.

I was cooking this in a carbon steel pan, so I didn't want to add too much acid throughout the cooking time, which also made me not add in any of the cherry tomatoes I had on hand, and I added in the balsalmic at the very end.

If you want to bulk this out a bit, some sort of canned beans (rinsed/drained) added to the veggies would be good, and peas would be good, too.

Extras freeze well, so make as big a batch as your rice cooker allows, and give future you a nice easy side to reheat.

If you don't have a rice cooker, I'd probably do something along the lines of an America's Test Kitchen quinoa pilaf recipe, and do some extra work toasting the rinsed quinoa, setting it aside, then doing veggies, and adding the quinoa back into the mix when adding the water/stock. For me, I'm trying to build up the seasoning on the pan, and have been enjoying using my rice cooker a lot, both of which informed my choices.