How to Cook with Quinoa with Curtis Stone - Coles

(THEME MUSIC) Now here's an ingredient that you may or may not have come across just yet. Quinoa. It's this beautiful little grain. Well, it looks like a little grain. It's actually an ancient grass. It looks just like a grain and you pretty much treat it like one. This is one of those incredible things for vegetarians because it is a complete protein. It comes in a variety of different types. The most common one that you'll find is this one here which is the one that's lighter in colour. I'm going to show you how I make it. Just a drop of oil into a pan with some shallots and I'm going to cook it almost how you would cook a risotto. I've washed it off. I always give it a quick rinse and throw it in with the onions like that. Give that a good old stir around. Now, you can toast the quinoa for a couple of minutes and you'll develop sort of more of a nutty flavour if that's what you're looking for. But I'm going to go ahead and throw in my chicken stock. So just because it's an incredible vegetarian dish and you can do this with water or a vegetable stock, it doesn't mean that it's not amazing for meat eaters like me too. So once it's cooked, it comes together like this and it's that... Mmm! Not only has it got this beautiful nutty kind of a flavour, it also has this incredible texture 'cause there's so many little pieces in there, it gives you a really nice mouth feel. So first of all, let's make a quick dressing. I've got some red wine vinegar with a few onions. You want to whisk in a little bit of extra *** olive oil and then you just throw in a bunch of different flavours. So I'm going to start, of course, with my quinoa, which is right there. And then I've got some cherry tomatoes. Some chickpeas. Some diced cucumber. Some red peppers, a little bit of fresh parsley... And you toss all of that together and you have this incredible salad that literally just takes a couple of minutes to throw together and then you basically just pour that and it's this unbelievable tasty salad that's so good for you. Over here I've got a few of these little fritters that I've made. They're so tasty. I can't wait until we've finished this because the crew in here are going to come and eat one of these and they're going to be blown away, they're so, so good. But all I've done is taken some of that quinoa and I've mixed it with a little bit of egg, a little bit of flour, a few different ingredients, some fresh parsley, a little bit of lemon juice. You can even put a little bit of crumbled cheese through it. You put them into a little shape and pan fry them in a little bit of olive oil and they are fantastic. So, now you know all about quinoa, there's no reason why you're looking at me and you're not going out and cooking it, good luck. (THEME MUSIC)