Quinoa w/ Spinach, Ginger & Yams
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.
Equipment
- Rice Cooker
Ingredients
- 3 cloves roasted garlic (or 2 cloves unroasted garlic)
- 2 c. spinach chopped
- 1/2 shallot minced
- 1 tbsp. ginger minced
- 1 yam cubed
- 1 c. white quinoa
- 3 c. water
- dash salt
- dash pepper
- 1/4 c. tamari (or soy sauce of choice)
- 1/4 c. white rice vinegar
Instructions
Prepare Ingredients
- 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.