Spanish Quinoa

I never cooked quinoa but we eat couscous all of the time and I thought it would be fairly similar to that and it really was. It has a little longer cooking time than the couscous but tastes just as delicious. The fact that it's a healthy.

We need to do grocery shopping so I didn't have a lot to work with. I decided to make it a Spanish style quinoa side dish. It was really good! You can really add anything you want to this. Next time I'm going to do it with roasted veggies.

I found that the quinoa retained a lot of heat when it was cooked and it stayed really hot the entire time we were eating it. It was really good! I hope you like it was much as we did. I served it with seasoned grilled chicken and a simple side salad.

Oh and if you have a health market area in your grocery store look for it there. You can just get a little bit to try it and it's probably cheaper.

This makes 2 servings

Ingredients:

1/2 c. quinoa
1 c. water
1 onion, diced
1 tomato, diced
1/2 c. fresh cilantro, roughly chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 tsp. black pepper
1/2 tsp. kosher salt
1/2 tsp. crushed red pepper flakes
1/4 tsp. cayenne pepper
1/4 tsp. turmeric
1 lime, juice of
cooking spray

Directions:

1. Heat a large saucepan over medium-high heat. Spray with cooking spray and saute onions for 5 minutes. Add garlic and tomatoes. Saute another 5 minutes.
2. Add all seasonings and quinoa. Saute 2 minutes.
3. Add water, bring to a boil. Cover and simmer for 15 minutes. 
4. Simmer until all of the water is evaporated (mine took about 25 minutes instead of 15). If it's taking too long uncover and turn to high. Keep stirring so it doesn't burn.
5. Turn off heat, add lime juice, stir. Let it sit for 5 minutes covered.