Curried Chickpeas with Rice

Here’s another recipe from Cooking Light magazine, which I adapted to make even healthier.  The original recipe used pork but I made it vegetarian by using chickpeas instead.  I also swapped out the regular dairy milk and used light coconut milk, and swapped the white flour to millet flour, although it would probably be just fine without any flour at all.  I added garam masala and increased the amount of curry powder because the original was bland.  I think the result is a really nice vegan meal.  Having pre-cooked rice and chickpeas on hand makes it a super-fast weeknight meal. Continue reading “Curried Chickpeas with Rice”

Freezing Rice and Other Grains

Ever make more rice than you can eat? If you aren’t going to use it in the next few days, you can freeze it for later use.  Here’s how:

  1. Put 1-1/2 to 2 cups of plain cooked (cooled) brown rice in a quart-size, freezer-grade ziplock bag. Don’t seal it shut yet.
  2. Flatten the bag out, then gently roll from the bottom up to remove as much air as possible, and zip closed.
  3. Flatten it back out and freeze flat.

To thaw, simply massage the bag briefly to break up the frozen rice, then empty it into a microwave safe bowl, cover with a paper towel, and microwave for 30 seconds or so (depending on the wattage of your microwave).

This works for most other cooked whole grains as well. I used to buy frozen pre-cooked brown rice at Trader Joe’s, but this is more economical and tastes fresher.

How to Cook Whole Grains

Barley

Barley is available pearled (the bran has been removed) or quick cooking (parboiled). Technically neither are whole grains but nutritionally speaking they count toward your whole-grain servings because of their high fiber content.

To Cook: Pearl barley Continue reading “How to Cook Whole Grains”

How to Parboil Brown Rice

This recipe on how to parboil brown rice is very useful for when you want to substitute brown rice for white rice in a one pot meal. Parboiled brown rice cooks in the same amount of time as regular long grain white rice.

Parboil Brown Rice Cooking Instructions

  1. Combine in a 2 quart saucepan – 1 cup brown rice and 2 cups water
  2. Stir lightly, bring to a rolling boil and reduce heat to simmer and cook for 15 minutes.
  3. Remove from heat and drain.  If using within 2 hours you can leave it on the counter, otherwise refrigerate or freeze for later use.

Use in place of “long grain white rice” in any one-pot recipe.

Dirty Quinoa

Serves: 3-4 people
Hands-on time: 15-20 min
Total time: 30 min

This recipe for “dirty” quinoa is adapted from the dirty rice I used to make all the time when I was single and cooking was a low priority.  I also used to chop up hotdogs and throw them in to make a meal, but um I don’t do that anymore. Now it’s just clean, whole, unprocessed food for me.  I sure wish they made a natural hotdog flavor I could add to a dish to get my hotdog fix.  Anyway, enough about hot dogs, let’s make some dirty quinoa!

Ingredients

Continue reading “Dirty Quinoa”