Laissez Fare: Quinoa Hot Cereal in Your Rice Cooker

I’ve always had a habit of finding a food I like and then eating it obsessively until I can no longer stand the sight of it (hello, everything on the menu at DOJO my freshman year of college).  That’s kind of what happened with me and quinoa.  Until today, when I accidentally discovered that I could make Quinoa Hot Cereal in my rice cooker. 

Lately I’ve been weirdly kind of *gasp* getting in to cooking.  I know.  It’s super weird, it’s like I’ve been possessed by Pinterest.  Anyway, with that in mind, it’s no surprise that tear sheets of recipes that look tasty in print have now started to litter my [annoying not magnetic] refrigerator door.  Like the one from this month’s Everyday Food for Hot Rice Cereal, which I thought I would make after I dropped Delilah off at my {awesome, dedicated, savior} Mother-In-Law’s house for my few weekly hours of blissful free time.  And by free time, I mean time in which I try to jam as much work as possible in to so that I can have less to do when the attention monster is home.

But…I failed to read the recipe as per uge.  And I didn’t have any brown rice.  Or Maple Syrup.  Or raisins, or almonds, or basically any of the ingredients but Milk.  But you know what I did have?  LOTS OF UNCOOKED QUINOA THAT I HADN’T LOOKED AT IN WEEKS.

So here we go ~

• 1 cup quinoa, 2 cups water into your rice cooker (or a pot, if you like to watch things not boil) Hit the button, and in about 15-20 mins, your quinoa is done.  Note: I like to use Bob’s Red Mill Quinoa generally speaking since it’s already been washed of it’s bitterness and you can therefore skip that step.
• When the quinoa is cooked, remove half for later. Or don’t and double my recipe. I do it this way because my rice cooker crispifies less than a cup of anything.
• add 1 cup of Milk (I used whole) 1 tsp Cinnamon, and about a tbsp of Agave Syrup (or Maple, like Martha suggests.)  Turn the rice cooker back to hot, and leave it open, stirring occasionally. (I closed mine for a minute and got some major bubble overflow action that you’ll probably want to avoid.)
• Heat until cereal thickens just a little.  And that’s it!  Add fruit of your choice, sugar/syrup to taste, and ENJOY THE HELL OUT OF IT.

{Bowl is Spilt Milk by Fred}