Recipe 11: Quinoa Chili

 I decided to try something slightly healthier and less meaty than my recipes so far.  I have read a lot about Quinoa, which is supposed to be kind of a super food and really good for you.  So I have always wanted to try something with Quinoa... and I saw this recipe which looked really good and had a ton of good reviews.

Thus, I made Quinoa Chili.  Here is the link

Ingredients

• 1 cup uncooked quinoa, rinsed
• 2 cups water
• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
• 1 onion, chopped
• 4 cloves garlic, chopped
• 1 tablespoon chili powder
• 1 tablespoon ground cumin
• 1 (28 ounce) can crushed tomatoes
• 2 (19 ounce) cans black beans, rinsed and drained
• 1 green bell pepper, chopped
• 1 red bell pepper, chopped
• 1 zucchini, chopped
• 1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and minced
• 1 tablespoon minced chipotle peppers in adobo sauce
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• salt and ground black pepper to taste
• 1 cup frozen corn
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro

Directions

1. Bring the quinoa and water to a boil in a saucepan over high heat. Reduce heat to medium-low, cover, and simmer until the quinoa is tender, and the water has been absorbed, about 15 to 20 minutes; set aside.
2. Meanwhile, heat the vegetable oil in a large pot over medium heat. Stir in the onion, and cook until the onion softens and turns translucent, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic, chili powder, and cumin; cook and stir 1 minute to release the flavors. Stir in the tomatoes, black beans, green bell pepper, red bell pepper, zucchini, jalapeno pepper, chipotle pepper, and oregano. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Bring to a simmer over high heat, then reduce heat to medium-low, cover, and simmer 20 minutes.
3. After 20 minutes, stir in the reserved quinoa and corn. Cook to reheat the corn for 5 minutes. Remove from the heat, and stir in the cilantro to serve.

Changes

I only made a few small changes to this recipe.  The first was that instead of boilding the quinoa in water I used Chicken Broth, just to add more flavor. The only other change that I made was to use canned corn instead of frozen corn.

The Process

This was not a recipe that Sprinkles appreciated much.  She was slightly interested in the Jalepenos as I chopped them up, but not much else.

The first step was to make the quinoa. Here it is starting up. 

This process required a lot of chopping. I had to use all of my knives and all of my cutting boards.  But eventually it was all ready.

By this time Sprinkles had  gotten on top of the cabinet where she could moniter everything and meow at me.

I first cooked the onions, shown below.

Then I added the other vegetables and the canned tomatoes and started cooking it.

Once the quinoa was ready I added that to the rest of the mixture.  The picture below was taken after adding the quinoa.

 After mixing everything together and letting it cook for a while, the chili was pretty much done.

The only thing left to do was to make cornbread!  My standard cornbread for chili is just Marie Callender's packaged cornbread.  It is simply to make and tastes great, especially with chili.

 

 I mixed up the cornbread as the chili was cooking and it was done at close to the same time.

 

I made up some honey butter for the cornbread.  Which is just some butter and honey melted together in the microwave, and then added cheese to the chili.

I have a chili that I typically make which has meat.  I really like that chili, and while I don't think the quinoa chili is really close to that, I do think that it was pretty good and it was much healthier. I was actually pretty surprised at how good it was.  While there was no meat in it, the quinoa definitely kind of made it meaty.  Overall it was a very good dish.