Recipe: Black truffle popped quinoa

Last Updated on December 6, 2021 by Aaron von Frank

This popped quinoa recipe is savory and delicious! It’s also loaded with protein, dietary fiber, healthy fats, and vitamins.

For some odd reason, our parents have the impression that we like good food. We have no idea why. 🙂

Thus, whenever a birthday or holiday rolls around, the majority of the presents we get are edible. For instance, at Christmas, we were gifted a 5 pound bag of organic Royal White quinoa from Food to Live By. We liked it so much, we’ve since bought several more bags.

In addition to foraging, we grow lots of unusual foods in our garden. Plus, we’re always in search of new and unusual foods from around the world. So we’re pretty familiar with quinoa, especially given that it’s been making lots of headlines in recent years as a highly nutritious complex carbohydrate with the potential to yield as much per acre as more common grains (wheat, corn, etc) while offering superior nutritional benefits (more protein, vitamins, and minerals).

Unfortunately, our climate does not allow us to grow quinoa very well (it’s native to high altitude regions in the Andes Mountains of South America), but we have grown its close relative, amaranth.

Can you pop quinoa? 

Each quinoa grain is tiny, roughly the size of a freckle. Often, it’s prepared like rice: cooked in water to enlarge and soften the starch, then flavored or covered with a sauce.

Left: Raw, uncooked Royal White quinoa. Right: popped quinoa at the end of this recipe.

However, quinoa can also be popped, similar to popcorn. Unlike popcorn, each grain of popped quinoa is still quite small. Also, rather than being soft like popcorn, popped quinoa maintains a nice crunchy texture.

Of the various preparation methods we’ve tried, popped quinoa is our favorite way to eat it. We like having popped quinoa around as a snack, sprinkled on salad, or using it as a small side dish at dinner.

Recipe: Black Truffle Popped Quinoa

The Tyrant has been experimenting with this recipe for months to get the perfect flavor combination. Not to worry: this recipe is super simple (4 ingredients) and only takes about 10 minutes to make.

The secrets to making it are:

1. timing (follow the instructions below), and
2. using really good ingredients.

It doesn’t get much simpler than this popped quinoa recipe! There are only four ingredients. From left to right: quinoa, nutritional yeast, extra virgin olive oil, truffle sea salt.

The four ingredients we recommend using are: 

1. Organic Royal White quinoa from Food to Live By.
2. San Francisco Salt Co’s Italian Black Truffle Sea Salt.
3. Frontier Co-op’s nutritional yeast. (We LOVE this stuff and use it on salads, kale chips, and anything we can! Since it tastes like cheese, vegetarians use it as a cheese substitute; it’s also very high in protein.)
4. A good organic extra virgin olive oil.

Black truffle popped quinoa recipe served with garden-fresh tomatoes and ground cherries. The combination of sweet, salty, and umami is so good! This combo makes a great snack or light lunch.

Print

Black truffle popped quinoa

Course: Appetizer, lunch, Side Dish

Cuisine: American

Keyword: popped quinoa, popped quinoa recipe

Cook Time: 10 minutes

Total Time: 10 minutes

Servings: 3

You'll love this simple, savory popped quinoa recipe with a light truffle flavor. It's also loaded with protein, dietary fiber, healthy fats, and vitamins.

Ingredients

• 1 cup organic white quinoa
• 1/4 cup nutritional yeast
• 1/8 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 1/2 teaspoon black truffle sea salt or to taste

Instructions

1. Add 1c quinoa to a cold uncovered saucepan.
2. Turn saucepan to 4.5 (medium heat).
3. Stir regularly, keeping pan uncovered the whole time. I pick up the pan and give it a shake, swirling the grain in the pan every ~30 seconds or so to heat evenly, just as you would popcorn made in a pan.
4. The quinoa will start to release steam - this is good, you want it to dry out so it's crunchy. it will start popping more after about 5-7 minutes. Once it's sufficiently dry, the quinoa will pop more rapidly and turn golden. Keep shaking & swirling!
5. Add salt now b/c you want the mushroom pieces in the salt to release some of their oils.
6. Remove from heat and transfer to a bowl.
7. Add nutritional yeast and stir.
8. Add extra virgin olive oil and stir. Eat it warm (immediately) or cool (later). It will store covered on the counter for at least 24 hours.

Oh, nom nom. Black truffle popped quinoa.

Last tip: this savory, black truffle popped quinoa recipe pairs wonderfully with something sweet and juicy, such as fresh summer produce (hence the tomatoes and ground cherries in the photo).

We hope you enjoy crunching away on this delicious popped quinoa recipe as much as we do. Enjoy!

KIGI,