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What do you do with frozen vegetables? I only eat peas, corn and sometimes corn but my husband wants me to use a vegetable / bean mix he found and put it in quinoa. But he wants flavors added, like from a saute. Is that even a possibility? I think of most frozen veg like broccoli as a soggy mess.
Usually I use fresh other than peas that I use frozen 99% of the time. I defrost them and eat them as a snack. I do usually have a couple bags of soup veggie mixes to make a quick soup and stir fry mixes to do a quick stir fry in the freezer. These are used for very quick meals since the prep is minimal.
Broccoli cut up is is better than the stalks as it will cook quicker. I also find bags don't get the chunks of ice in them like the boxes so those veggies are less soggy.
I use frozen vegetables mostly for making soups. I don't care for those frozen mixed vegetable combos for some reason but that's just a personal preference. I've made rice dishes that I've added frozen peas to that work out well.
With those, I generally cook the rice with whatever flavorings the recipe calls for, you could cook it in chicken broth or saute some onion or shallots or spices in the pan before adding the rice, or in your case quinoa, and the liquid you're cooking it in. Let it cook for 15 minutes (or however long the package says to cook quinoa) without taking the lid off. At that time stir in the frozen vegetables, put the cover back on, and let it stand off the heat for about 15 minutes to defrost and heat up the vegetables.
I've only ever added about 1/2 cup of frozen vegetables to what started out as 1 to 1 1/4 cups of uncooked rice and I usually just use peas, so they're pretty small and at the end of the 15 minutes are perfectly warmed up. I also usually make it in an enameled cast iron pan so it holds the heat well.
And, if you have a rice cooker, I'm betting you could probably use it to cook quinoa and do a similar technique, adding the frozen veg at the end and not turning off the rice cooker but keeping it on the hold or warm setting until ready to serve. I've seen recipes for cooking all sorts of stuff in a rice cooker, like cooking your rice and putting fresh spinach or cooked meats or other vegetables in it. You can certainly cook quinoa in a rice cooker. I have a rice cooker but it's pretty small so I've never actually tried to make one of those mixed recipes but if you can do it with rice, why not quinoa?
I guess another alternative would be to cook the quinoa by itself using broth and desired flavorings and in a separate pan, cook and drain the vegetables and then stir them into the prepared quinoa. Quinoa doesn't get all glommy and stuck together like cold rice does so you could pretty much stir cooked quinoa into some other cooked stuff much more easily than you can cold, cooked rice.
I'm starting to think that frozen is not the way to go. I just read an article titled "How to Make Frozen Vegetables Suck Less" and number five was "Use fresh vegetables." That can't be good. :D
I generally only use frozen veggies for soups. Oh, Archie says frozen vegs are fine with him any time in his dinner.
I think fresh is always better, but off season I find frozen better and less expensive than what I can get in the stores. The frozen veggies I use for quick meals is more about convenience. I think the key is buying at a store with good turnover and not keeping them in the freezer long as once they get ice crystals the quality goes down.Quote:
Originally Posted by janedoe