How to Cook Quinoa

Quinoa is a small, round seed that can be eaten like rice or couscous. It’s full of protein and fiber, and it even comes in a range of different colours!

Being packed with protein and fiber makes quinoa very filling, so a small cupful (200-250ml) of dry quinoa makes easily enough for four people. And if you’re already familiar with cooking rice (link), cooking quinoa is pretty straightforward.

Start by washing the quinoa.  You can add equal amounts of quinoa and water to your saucepan, mix, and drain off the water or, my preferred method, put the quinoa in a metal sieve, and rinse it under running water.

Put the quinoa in a saucepan and add water. Quinoa needs a lot of water – three times as much water as quinoa! Use a measuring jug, or just the same cup you used to measure your quinoa. However, for really good quinoa, I would recommend cooking it in stock rather than plain water – it makes a huge different to both the texture and flavour!

Put the lid on your saucepan and bring to the boil. Once it’s reached boiling point, you can turn the pan down so that it’s just gently boiling. It then needs to be boiled for about twenty minutes, or until it’s soft and has absorbed all the water. Remember to turn the pan off once the water’s all gone!

 

Quinoa isn’t nearly as common as rice or pasta, but it’s a great way to add variety to your mealtimes!

How to Make a Mild, Creamy Curry (with Rice)

There are a huge range of curries, from countries all over the world! Curries can be hot, mild, rich, creamy, or light. This curry is both light and creamy, with variations to satisfy vegetarians and carnivores!

You will need:

• a sharp knife
• a chopping board
• a wok or deep saucepan with lid
• a saucepan with lid

and the ingredients (for four people):

• 1-2 cups rice
• A little oil
• 2 medium onions
• 2-3 carrots
• ½ a cauliflower
• frozen peas
• 2 cans chickpeas
• coconut milk
• ½ tsp garlic
• 1 tsp ginger
• coriander
• cumin
• fenugreek
• turmeric
• salt

 

To start, wash your rice and put it on to boil. This will then boil while the curry cooks; you can find more details on cooking rice here.

Place your wok or deep saucepan on a gentle heat. Add a little oil (less than a teaspoon is fine), and dice your onion. (You can find more detailed instructions here: onions)

Add your diced onion to the pan, along with your ginger, garlic, and dried spices. I tend to cook by eye, so it’s difficult for me to give precise measurements for how much to use. A light sprinkling to roughly cover the onions tends to yield good results. Be generous with the coriander, but sparing with the turmeric and fenugreek as these can be bitter if overused. If you don’t have the individual spices, you can just use a generic curry mix.

Dice your carrots (instructions here), and add them to the pan. Add enough coconut milk to just barely cover the onions and carrots. Once the pan is boiling, make sure the lid is off so that the sauce will reduce down. (Reduce down is the culinary term for sauces losing water and getting thicker.) There should always be a little liquid left during cooking – if it’s all gone, add a little more milk.

Cut your cauliflower into mini florets (tutorial here), then add them to the pan.

Drain and rinse your tinned chickpeas.

Five minutes before serving, add your chickpeas and frozen peas to the pan.

Just before serving, make sure to taste the sauce. If it tastes like it’s lacking something, try adding a teaspoon of salt. For a creamier sauce, you could add ground cashew nuts; if you want a sweeter curry, try adding dessicated coconut or raisins!

 

This curry is delicious with just chickpeas, but if you’d rather have meat, chicken also goes well with this recipe. Simply add chunks of chicken (roughly 2cm cubes) along with the onions.

If you make curry with this recipe, I’d love to see a picture of your finished dish!

How to Cook Rice

As well as being a staple food around the world, rice is one of my personal favourites! It’s also easy to cook, once you know how.

 

There are several different types of rice, but they all fall into short or long-grain, white or brown rice.

Short-grain rice is a short, fat, grain and tends to be stickier than long-grain rice. This is the kind of rice used for risotto, sushi, and rice pudding. It goes perfectly with all sorts of East Asian dishes.

Long-grain rice is longer and thinner, and (at least where I live) is more common than short-grain rice. It’s the perfect accompaniment to curries and chillis, and a ton of dishes from the Middle East and India.

White rice is rice that has been refined to make it easier to cook and digest. When most people think of rice, they think of white rice.

Brown rice is less refined than white rice, so it contains more fibre. Fibre is really good for you, and can help you to feel full for a long time after eating, but it does make the rice take a little longer to cook.

No matter what kind of rice you’re cooking, I find that a small cupful (200-250ml) of dry rice makes roughly three portions. Remember, it plumps up a lot during cooking!

 

Start by washing your rice. I always used to skip this step, and it’s not essential, but I find it makes the rice a little lighter and fluffier. There are a couple of different ways to wash rice. One way is to add equal parts rice and water to your saucepan, mix, and drain off the water. The method I prefer is to put my rice in a metal sieve, and rinse it under running water.

Put the rice in a saucepan and add cold water. For white rice, you need twice as much cold water as rice. You can use the same cup for rice and water, or use a measuring jug. (200ml of rice needs about 400ml of water, for example). Brown rice needs a little more water – about 20% or a quarter extra is fine. So for 200ml of brown rice, aim for a little less than 450ml of water.

Put the lid on your saucepan and bring to the boil. Once it’s reached boiling point, you can turn the pan down so that it’s just gently boiling. Rice has a tendency to want to boil over, so try and keep an eye (or an ear) on it.

Once white rice has been boiling for just 5 minutes, you can turn the saucepan off! The rice will continue to cook in the steam, and absorb all the water. (This takes about 20 minutes.) This stops you overcooking the rice, and it also saves energy!

Brown rice will need to go on gently boiling for about 20-30 minutes, or until all the water is gone. Don’t leave the pan on once it’s boiled dry though, that’s how you end up with burned rice!

 

I love rice with all sorts of dishes, especially stir-fry (link) and curry (link). It’s a really versatile grain that goes with a huge range of flavours, so it’s well worth learning to cook.

Finally, although rice is a great food, it can cause food poisoning. As I mentioned in my food safety post (link), it’s important to cool rice quickly once cooked, and only reheat it once. This is because there’s a rather special kind of microbe that can live in rice. Rather than being destroyed by cooking, it can actually be woken up from a dormant state called a spore. It can then grow if the rice is left in a warm environment. (You can find out more from the NHS here.)