VeganMoFo day 9 - Quinoa Chowder

Quinoa Chowder is from the November 2007 McDougall newsletter, and another recipe that you can experiment with to suit your own tastes.

Quinoa Chowder

We really enjoy soups during the winter months.  This is a hearty, yet simple soup, filled with delicious healthy ingredients.

Preparation Time:  15 minutes
Cooking Time:  40 minutes
Servings:  6-8

½ cup quinoa, rinsed well
4 cups vegetable broth
2 cups water
2-4 cloves garlic, minced
1 large onion, chopped
2 ½ cups fingerling potatoes, cut into bite sized pieces
2 jalapeno peppers, seeded and minced
¼ to ½ teaspoon chili paste (Sambal Oelek)
2 cups frozen corn kernels
3-4 cups sliced fresh spinach
freshly ground pepper to taste 

Place the first 8 ingredients in a large soup pot.  Bring to a boil, reduce heat, cover and cook for 20 minutes.  Add the corn, mix well and cook an additional 15 minutes.  Stir in the spinach 5 minutes before the soup is done.  Add some pepper to taste, if desired.

Hints:  To spice this up a bit more, let each person add some hot sauce to taste before eating.  If you can’t find fingerling potatoes, use Yukon Gold or red potatoes and chop them into bite sized chunks.


My changes:
I was out of regular quinoa at the time so used red quinoa. Some people can tell a taste difference, but I can't.

Used my usual boxed salt-free oil-free vegetable broth from Pacific.

For the onion, I took the lazy way out and used most of a bag of diced frozen onions. We love onions. Used garlic cloves from a bag, too. I usually toss the bag into the freezer when I get home from the store and just take out as many cloves as needed for any particular dish. For this one, althoug it says 2 to 4 I used about 8. No vampires here!

Instead of having to buy 2 microwaveable bags of fingerling potatoes and then cut them up into a dice I just used frozen Southern Style hash brown potatoes. Cheaper and quicker. Those tiny bags of fingerlings are $5 each around here and aren't even organic.

As usual for me, I skipped the jalepenos and chili paste. Hubby dosed his bowl of soup with about an ounce of sriracha sauce. I don't know how his gut can stand that stuff! 

And again, as usual for me, I used frozen, not fresh spinach.

Now isn't that a pretty bowl of soup? Like my Mickey Mouse spoon, too? 

We had whole grain seeded bread with it. As with most of Mary McDougall's soup recipes, it made 2 large bowls for each of us with no leftovers, and thanks to that bread, kept us filled until breakfast the next morning.