Quinoa (pronounced Keen-waar) is super fashionable, but what in the world do you make with it?? You can use quinoa like rice to go with curries, chillis or salad, this recipe takes the traditional rice stuffed peppers and swaps out the rice for quinoa.  

I love this recipe because it crams in so much flavour! It's got cumin, garlic, chilli, coriander and nutritional yeast brings a cheesy flavour. You may be wondering what in the world nutritional yeast is!? It’s not like the yeast we use to make bread, it’s made from a similar plant, but nutritional yeast is not ‘active’, which means it won’t make your food rise or ferment. It is specifically cultivated for its nutritional value. It’s a bit of a powerhouse of nutrients and is usually fortified with vitamin B12 as well, which if you are a plant-based eater can be difficult to get enough in your diet.

The added bonus to these stuffed peppers they’ll give you a whopping 11g of fibre per serving – in the UK the recommended daily amount of fibre for adults is 30g, and most of us don’t even get 20g a day.

You can enjoy these stuffed peppers whenever you like, dinner, lunch or even have half a pepper as a snack. If the time it takes to make these puts you off, you can short cut by buying pre-cooked quinoa, which is available in pretty much all supermarkets now – then it will take you about 10minutes prep time and 30 minutes in the oven – perfect for fitting in a quick home workout or a bit of meditation ;)

Quick tips

1.    Maybe you are wondering if quinoa is for you, or you’ve tried it, and you don’t like it, don’t worry you can still make these super stuffed peppers anyway, just swap out the quinoa for your favourite kind of rice.
2.    I used to end up having a right faff on peeling avocados – don’t ask what I was doing, but it was messy, a super simple way to ‘peel’ them is to grab a spoon and scoop out rather than trying to peel back the skin.

Serves: 4
Time: 1hr 15 mins

Ingredients

For the Peppers
300g of quinoa (or rice if you prefer)
½ litre of vegetable stock
4 bell peppers, deseeded and halved
100g tomato salsa
1 tablespoon of nutritional yeast (optional)
2 teaspoons of cumin powder
1½ teaspoons of chilli
1½ teaspoons of garlic powder
1 400g tin of black beans

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Toppings

1 avocado, stoned and peeled
The juice of 1 lime
Hot sauce
A handful of fresh coriander, chopped
1 red onion, diced

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Instructions

1. Begin by preheating your oven to 190°C

2. Rinse the quinoa thoroughly and add it and the vegetable stock to a pan and bring to the boil, reduce the heat, cover and let the quinoa simmer until all the stock has absorbed. This should take about 20 minutes, and the quinoa will be much bigger, and fluffy and tender to taste. It is really important to turn the heat to low otherwise you’ll have burned quinoa.

3. Brush the halved peppers with a high heat oil like avocado or coconut oil.  

4. Add the quinoa to a large bowl with the salsa, yeast, cumin, chilli, garlic and black beans – taste and adjust the seasoning by adding salt/black pepper, more cumin, chill or garlic.

5. Generously stuff the halved peppers with the quinoa remembering that the mixture will shrink in the heat of the oven.  Place the peppers on a non-stick baking tray before baking in the oven for around 30 minutes, or until the skin of the peppers is slightly charred.

6. Serve the stuffed peppers with your favourite toppings – we love sliced avo, a squeeze of fresh lime and a dash of hot sauce and a sprinkle of red onion and fresh coriander…nom nom nom!!

7. They are best enjoyed fresh from the oven, but leftovers will keep well in the fridge for a few days and make for a really convenient tasty lunch.

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Macronutrients

Calories: 311
Protein: 14g
Carbohydrates: 59g
Fibre: 11g
Fats 3g