Can you eat Quinoa raw?
Raw food is being touted as the best thing for you at the moment. There are Juice masters and raw food guru’s aplenty. I eat the vast majority of my vegetables raw and of course all my fruit.
This is really the best way as you do not cook out all the goodness contained. I was pondering how to prepared quinoa without cooking and it is possible with some quinoa grains and not others.
All you need to do is rinse the quinoa,soak it in cool water for 8 hours and rinse it once more. That’s it. It is still quite crunchy and if you have dentures I would forget it. But the benefit of preparing quinoa this way is of course you retain nearly all the goodness.
The other method of preparing raw quinoa is of course by sprouting them. I use quinoa this way from time to time but it is my least favourite way of eating it. It just doesn’t taste as good. If you have sprouted quinoa you know they barely change at all and the sprouts are tiny. Very unimpressive.
I heard from a food scientist who did her doctorate on quinoa that eating quinoa raw actually has no additional benefits. In fact that the body absorbs the protein of quinoa better when it’s cooked. The enzymes (protein as well) that are deactivated with heat are more easily digested when cooked.
-Sergio
That is very interesting - I would love to know more about that research. Thanks for your info. I am learning all the time. You would think that raw would be better wouldn’t you?
[...] Quinoa is not bad for you if you do not cook it for a set amount of time. For certain foods such as kidney beans the instructions insist that you cook for a minimum set time to get rid of impurities but with quinoa you are quite safe. You can even eat raw quinoa [...]