Quinoa has been a staple for my diet for years now. Quinoa with over-easy-eggs for breakfast. Quinoa with nuts, lemon juice, and chopped veggies or fruit for lunch. Or dinner. Or snack. Quinoa with apples for breakfast. Mexican quinoa salad any time of the day. As a former vegetarian, I got to be pretty creative with my quinoa. I love how easy creating a balanced vegetarian meal with complete protein is when you include quinoa.
For this post I wanted to explore how to use quinoa as a base for steak. Cooking steak this semester has shown me that I really do enjoy eating it. However because it is fairly expensive I wanted to find ways to make it go further than one meal. I got really excited about this recipe (http://www.superhealthykids.com/steak-fajita-rice-bowls-oh-sweet-basil/) but realized that simply replacing the rice with quinoa still resulted in a dish that would use up all of my steak in one recipe AND that was not really saving any money. I kept hunting and decided combining steak with another recipe I found for Mexican quinoa here:
http://www.frugelegance.com/mexican-style-quinoa-healthy-meal-or-side-dish/
I loved this recipe because it takes a reasonable amount of quinoa (which also tends to be an expensive food) and adds cheap but filling ingredients such as corn and black beans.
I decided to cook the steak using the same method I had used to make nachos. I cut up my steak but accidentally cut some of it too thinly. However I thought cooking it for 60 seconds per side would hopefully work. This is the result of my labor:
For this post I wanted to explore how to use quinoa as a base for steak. Cooking steak this semester has shown me that I really do enjoy eating it. However because it is fairly expensive I wanted to find ways to make it go further than one meal. I got really excited about this recipe (http://www.superhealthykids.com/steak-fajita-rice-bowls-oh-sweet-basil/) but realized that simply replacing the rice with quinoa still resulted in a dish that would use up all of my steak in one recipe AND that was not really saving any money. I kept hunting and decided combining steak with another recipe I found for Mexican quinoa here:
http://www.frugelegance.com/mexican-style-quinoa-healthy-meal-or-side-dish/
I loved this recipe because it takes a reasonable amount of quinoa (which also tends to be an expensive food) and adds cheap but filling ingredients such as corn and black beans.
I decided to cook the steak using the same method I had used to make nachos. I cut up my steak but accidentally cut some of it too thinly. However I thought cooking it for 60 seconds per side would hopefully work. This is the result of my labor:
Here was what I did not expect - loading each of my steak chunks into the skillet took about 80 seconds. However, I did not want to overcook these pieces so I flipped then as soon as possible and then removed them after a minute. I would not have guessed that the extra 20 second would cause one side to cook medium rare and the other side to cook medium according to my chart (https://www.pinterest.com/pin/203858320609442957/). I will definitely not slice it so small before cooking again. Another problem I had was that some of the pieces were so small that they ended up being quite well done and a bit tough.
Even though it was unevenly cooked, the steak went very well with my quinoa. I was so excited about eating it that I forgot to take a picture of my dinner before eating it all. Instead, here is a picture of the leftovers I ate for lunch and dinner the next day:
Even though it was unevenly cooked, the steak went very well with my quinoa. I was so excited about eating it that I forgot to take a picture of my dinner before eating it all. Instead, here is a picture of the leftovers I ate for lunch and dinner the next day: