Though I’ve gotten pretty good at making restaurant-level rice at home, I have to admit I’m a bit of a newbie on the quinoa front.
The gluten-free food, which is technically a seed, not a grain, is surprisingly easy to mess up. It can clump together if cooked incorrectly, or taste bitter, or run a little “stiff” and mealy.
But given that the cooked whole grain (confusingly, it’s officially categorised in that group despite being a “pseudocereal”) contains 4.4g satiating protein and 2.8g gut-boosting fibre per 100g, I figured working out how to prepare it is worthwhile.
Thankfully, it turns out a popular flavour-boosting, anti-bitterness step takes a matter of minutes.
You should toast your quinoa before boiling it
Part of the bitter flavour some people experience when eating quinoa is due to the seed’s coating, saponin.
This outer layer not only makes the whole grain taste bitter, but saponins can actually also be toxic to us (though our cholesterin inactivates them, which means we very rarely feel any effects from them).
One way to remove that bitter flavour is to rinse your quinoa. You can do this by placing it in a sieve before cooking it and letting cold water run over it for a minute or so.
But you can also further banish that bitter taste and deepen the nutty flavours of quinoa by toasting it in a pan after rinsing.
The Los Angeles Times said that, “Toasting brings out the oils and rich nuttiness of grains, lending depth of flavour to a variety of dishes”.
They suggested rinsing your quinoa and then cooking it over medium heat in a pan for about five minutes. In this time, they said, the seeds will “begin to toast, smell nutty and turn a light golden colour”.
What’s the best way to cook quinoa?
Once you’ve rinsed and toasted your quinoa, you actually have quite a few options for finishing the food off.
As Great British Chefs notes, there’s a lot of debate about how best to introduce water to them – whether you leave the lid on or off, for instance, or whether you cook them in a microwave, hob, or rice cooker.
After multiple experiments, though, they found that “cooking quinoa in a pot like pasta (Claire Saffitz’s preferred method) produced the best result”.
She advises we “cook the quinoa like pasta, so the exact quantity of water doesn’t matter – just make sure [your] saucepan is at least half full”.
Add the quinoa to the boiling, salted water, bring it back to the boil, and then reduce the heat and continue simmering (she’s team lid off).
Your quinoa should be ready in 12-15 minutes, she said, or when “you start to see the curly tail separate from the individual grains.”
After that, she uses an absorption method similar to the one chefs use for great rice: she places the drained grains back in the dry, hot saucepan, places two sheets of kitchen roll under the lid, and lets it steam, hob off, “making it fluffy instead of wet and soggy”.