Ordinarily I would make quinoa with sweet potatoes. Occasionally I'll toss in a purple potato or baby potato or russet potato if I'm getting real desperate! But, today the grocery store was almost entirely out of sweet potatoes. So, I improvised with their slightly more expensive counterpart: yams. This yam quinoa combines spinach, ginger, garlic, shallots, tamari, and rice vinegar in a quick and easy rice cooker meal.
There isn't a huge discernible difference between yams and sweet potatoes. You can use them interchangeably without really noticing. But they are two different plants and yams are more difficult to grow and find. They also have a deeper hue and richer flavor. There's some debate in the United States whether anything that we get in grocery stores is truly a legitimate "yam." For our purposes here, though, it really doesn't matter which one you get!
I was mostly just looking for something a little bit fun in the week post-Easter. And I don't know why I associate yams with holidays? That seems to harken back to a more Thanksgiving or Christmas theme. But here we are! In full on yam mode. Albeit more of a Japanese-style quinoa, spinach, and yam dish. So, I may be mixing culinary genres here... But the sky is the limit when it comes to trying out new flavor combinations! And the sweetness of yams helps balance out the bitterness of the quinoa and acidity of the tamari and rice vinegar.
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Variations of Yam Quinoa
I tend to cook in waves. I'll spend a couple of weeks making one thing and then a couple of weeks transitioning to something else. It's nice to be able to use the same types of ingredients that I can just keep on hand, so that I'm not constantly running to the grocery store! And I have a feeling that quinoa, spinach, and maybe yams are going to be my new food obsession.
This yam quinoa recipe combines spinach, ginger, garlic, shallots, tamari, and rice vinegar in a quick and easy rice cooker meal! These are some of my favorite dishes to make. I almost always have quinoa or lentils in my refrigerator to utilize throughout the week. All that you have to do is toss everything into a rice cooker and voila! Thirty to 45 minutes later there is perfectly cooked food. I use this kind of quinoa all of the time in salads, with scrambled eggs, and wrapped inside a toasted burrito.
For this recipe, I already had roasted garlic in the fridge. I tend to roast a couple of heads of garlic every couple of weeks just so that I already have it when I need but. To recreate this, you follow my Roasted Garlic recipe. It takes about an hour and requires a head of garlic, olive oil, and a garlic roaster or aluminum foil. Otherwise, use 1 clove unroasted garlic.
Cook Quinoa
Add garlic, spinach, shallot, ginger, yam, quinoa, and water to a rice cooker.
Press the cook button on the rice cooker. While quinoa is not rice, it does cook the same and oftentimes better than rice in a rice cooker. It typically takes 30-45 minutes.
When the quinoa is fully cooked, add salt, pepper, tamari, and rice vinegar to taste.
Fluff with a wooden spoon and serve, either immediately or make ahead of time and refrigerate.Do not use a fork or other metal utensil to fluff! It will scratch off the nonstick surface on the rice cooker. This will leach teflon into your food and cause future dishes to stick to the bottom.
Tips, Tricks, & Notes
While quinoa is not rice, it does cook the same and oftentimes better than rice in a rice cooker. For more tips and tricks to rice cooker quinoa, check out my article on The Fundamentals of Making Quinoa, including a stovetop version if you don't have or don't want to use a rice cooker.
I also tend to prefer tamari over soy sauce. They're both made from fermented soy and a lot of recipes use them interchangeably. Tamari tends to have a richer flavor and less salt content. It also tends to be gluten free.
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