Quinoa

I cooked up a huge pot of this last night, in a mixture of water and chicken broth, added mushrooms, onions, cumin, paprika and a touch of chile powder. Sooo delicious! I ate a giant pile of it. Then I looked it up on CC and realized how many calories I just consumed. About 400 (in addition to the bok choy and chicken also on my plate). Oops! On the plus side, it's extremely nutritious, low in fat, and was very delicious - totally worth going over my daily 1500-1600 allowance for.

If you haven't already tried quinoa... I recommend it. Just don't eat a huge pile of the stuff like I did 

I just realized I was looking at the stats for UNCOOKED quinoa - raw quinoa expands around 3 or 4 times when cooked, which means I didn't eat anywhere near 400 calories - more like, 150. Woo!

I was going to respond with that - glad you figured it out :)

I love quinoa and have been singing it's praises since I first discovered it a few years ago.  Don't know if you've found this yet Miso, but there's also a red quinoa that's more chewy and a little heavier it seems than the regular stuff and I love it too!!!  It is so easy to cook, maybe 15-20 minutes at a slow boil, easy as pie to cook in a rice cooker, absorbs flavours really well, adapts to any grain or rice recipe,  it's light and fluffy, and it is also the only whole grain that contains complete protein, like animal products.  You get a good mixture of protein, fats and fibre all in one food.  It digests slowly, leaving you fuller longer and it's a natural food.   Everyone should try this once!!!

Keep in mind Miso, the calorie content listed here is for dried quinoa, not cooked quinoa.   You'll find that most whole grains are in the 550-700 calorie range per dried cup.   Cooked quinoa is around 250 calories a cup so if you had 1.6 cups of quinoa to get to 400 calories that's a heck of a lot of quinoa.  If you had only 2/3 of a cup assuming it was 600 calories per cup then you actually only had about 165 calories!!!

You figured it all out while I was composing my post..lol...so you can eat 2.5 times as much now and get to 400 calories...that's what I do...lol...

johnnypenso, you can cook quinoa in a rice cooker????  that is wonderful news!  what are the quinoa/water ratios if you don't mind me asking??

Yes CC it works great in a rice cooker. I've cooked all kinds of grains in my rice cooker and they all turned out well.   In fact, the other day I started a batch and just as it started to boil in the rice cooker I had to leave to do a service call, so I shut it off, came home in a couple of hours and it was fully cooked and ready to eat, even though I had turned it off!!!  

I would use 2-1 water/quinoa for plain quinoa, but I usually add lots of vegetables to it and some of them will release water during cooking, like celery, mushrooms etc, so I if it's a mixture of stuff I'm cooking I'll often start at 1.5 or a bit more to 1 and when it pops over to the "warm" mode, I'll check it and if it's a bit undercooked, I just add some more water and flip it back to cooked.   It's come out perfect every time!!!!

miso-soup, i will tell you a secret :) if you like quinoa, then you should try red quinoa. very yummy... 

Crap I wish I had thought of that!!!...lol..

thanks for the tips, johnnypenso!  I do that with brown rice all the time, but never put quinoa in my rice cooker.  And I will definitely have to try red quinoa, though!

I absolutely love quinoa! In fact I had some today with dinner.

I always wondered about the nutritional value of the differently coloured quinoa varities. Which one is the "healthiest"? I'm sure they're all good, but I've heard conflicting information. I usually go for the white kind, but I'll definitely pick up the red quinoa next time I'm in the store!

Just about any grain will "cook" with less cost if you have the time to wait for it to absorb the liquids...Just bring it to a boil, then turn it off and leave it covered until liquids are gone.  This is common practice in parts of the world where fuel may be in short supply, like India.  I learned this when using my solar cooker on days that turned into heavy overcast/cool.  The temp only got to boiling before the sun went away, but I was called away & came back later to fully cooked rice; tempurature was below 100.  I have since tried this on stove & it works with brown rice, millet, split pea & teff.  Quinoa is a good soup thickener.

I usually make my quinoa with chicken broth.  Lately I have been making the way you would prepare Spanish rice.  Very yummy, but now the grandson wants to eat it as well.

Tried it today with chicken stock, onions and yellow and orange peppers, it was awesome!!  Thanks guys for the recipe info

Love quinoa! Love it!