Quinoa is one of my go-to staples. Particularly with sweet potatoes. Any kind of potato will work. But i particularly like pairing the nutty flavor of quinoa with the robust nature of sweet potatoes. It's not quite fall yet. But this sweet potato and garden quinoa adds some summer peppers to one of my favorite dishes.
Today, I added garden fresh tomatoes, bell peppers, banana peppers, jalapeño, and habaneros mixed with shallots and garlic. Seasoned with a little bit of cumin, and voila! A meal that will last for the rest of the week.
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Variations of Garden Peppers Quinoa
I'm particularly fond of making a staple dish and then adding whatever I have on hand to it. Quinoa can be bitter if you don't balance the flavor profile. I almost always add a sweet potato or other root vegetable to offset this.
Then, I tend to toss in whatever garden fruits and vegetables that are ripening in the garden or in season at the market! This brings out the diversity in quinoa, while also highlighting seasonal produce.
Here are variations of this recipes. As you can see by the sheer number of them, it truly is one of my favorite recipes!
Quinoa is great in everything. I tend to go a little overboard with constantly putting it in burritos! Which are absolutely delicious.
However, this week I have a plethora of lettuce and decided to make everything about salads! I paired this version of sweet potatoes and quinoa with a scrambled egg salad, a mayonnaise-free pasta salad, and in a tofu salad.
This is one of those recipes that you can keep on using throughout the seasons, sweet potato and garden vegetable quinoa is one of my favorites. Feel free to substitute your vegetables of choice to make it your own in this one pot meal! Although I used sweet potatoes, garlic, shallots, lemons, bay leaves, tri-color quinoa, and homegrown tomatoes, bell peppers, banana peppers, jalapeños, and habaneros.
Dice or mince all of the vegetables. Dice the sweet potatoes, tomato, bell pepper, and banana pepper. Mince the jalapeño, habaneros, garlic and shallots.Make sure to devein and deseed the bell peppers. The innards are edible, but rather bitter if you leave them in. I like to slice the sweet potatoes, cut them in half, and then in thirds. As with a small pizza, this makes 6 slices (one in half and then an X). That's how I make triangles, instead of cubes.
Cook Quinoa
Add all of the ingredients into a rice cooker. I like to start with the larger vegetables and then add the smaller ingredients. Top with the bay leaves, spices, and lemon juice. And then add the quinoa and water.This cooks the larger vegetables on the bottom, while dispersing the flavor profiles in the middle. Although with some mixing, this really doesn't matter all that much. Everything will eventually cook together!
Press the cook button on the rice cooker. It should take about 45 minutes to cook.
When the quinoa is fully cooked, let sit for 10 minutes, and then fluff with a wooden spoon and serve.Do not use a fork or other metal utensil. 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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