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Quinoa Upma Recipe. Indian Savory Breakfast or Side with Quinoa with mustard seeds, toasted cashews, carrots and peas. Vegan Gluten-free Soy-free Recipe. Pin this post.
Upma is a savory breakfast with veggies, spices and quick cooking forms of grains such as coarse semolina (hot wheat cereal), rice cereal, or rice flakes. Upma is usually served as breakfast or snack. With whole grains, it also can be served as a side like a pilaf.
Today’s Upma recipe uses Quinoa. Temper the spices in hot oil, cook the onions and toast the cashews, add other veggies, add washed quinoa, water and salt and cook until done. You can also use cooked quinoa or millet and mix in the cooked and spiced veggies. Upma is can be made dryer if served as a side or wetter to serve on its own. Add a dash of lemon or dress it with a chutney or ketchup if it feels too dry.
To make it with semolina or rava, roast the rava with the veggies for 7 to 8 minutes and add 2 cups hot water instead of room temperature water.
More quinoa recipes
- Lentil Quinoa Meatloaf Burgers GF option
- Quinoa Cauliflower Biryani GF
- Chickpea quinoa Lentil spinach Stew GF
- South Indian Quinoa with pumpkin and tamarind GF
- Quinoa Black Bean Casserole with cheddar cream sauce.
Reading this week:
The documentary “Gods in Shackles” throws light on the cruelty meted out against temple elephants in Southern India.
216 elephants have died this year already. the elephants being connected to religious organizations, this is an incredibly hard problem to solve in terms or rescue and legal justice. Here is more coverage about the elephants.
How Meat is destroying the planet in 7 Charts.
Quinoa Upma Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 cup uncooked quinoa
- 1 tsp organic canola or safflower oil
- 1/2 tsp mustard seeds
- 1/2 tsp urad dal, split black gram or use mung dal (petite yellow lentils)
- 1 green chili chopped, remove seeds to adjust spice if needed
- a generous pinch of asafeotida hing, optional (omit to make gluten-free or use certified gf asafetida)
- 10 curry leaves, fresh or frozen
- 1/2 cup finely chopped red onion
- 2 Tbsp chopped cashews
- 1/2 inch ginger minced, 1 tsp grated
- 1/2 cup chopped carrots
- 1/2 cup peas, fresh or frozen (thawed)
- 1/2 to 3/4 tsp salt
- 2 cups water
- cilantro and lemon juice for garnish
Instructions
- Wash the quinoa several times, drain and keep aside.
- In a medium skillet, add oil and heat at medium. When the oil is hot, add mustard seeds and urad dal and let them sputter or sizzle for 15 seconds.
- Add chili, asafeotida and curry leaves and cook for half a minute.
- Add onions and cashews and cook for 4 to 5 minutes or until translucent.
- Add ginger, carrots, and cook for 2 minutes.
- Add quinoa and roast for 2 minutes with the veggies.
- Add salt, water, peas, cover and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low-medium, cover and cook for 15 minutes. Let the quinoa sit covered for 5 minutes. then uncover, fluff and serve. Garnish with cilantro and generous lemon juice. Serve as a side, or as breakfast with hot masala chai.
Notes
Use 2.5 cups of cooked quinoa and add to the pan at step 7 with salt, peas and a splash of water. Mix well. Cover and cook for 2 minutes to heat up. Let sit for 5 minutes before serving. Add currants or other dried fruit along with cashews. Nutritional information based on one serving
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Such a comfort food!
Will you keep the proportion of spices the same if I did half quinoa and half tofu scramble? I am thinking of high protein upma with tofu for breakfast
Yes leave the spices the same.
Would dried curry leaves work in place of fresh or frozen? Thanks!
you could, it will just have a slightly different flavour
This sound great. Can I sub curry powder for curry leaves?
it’s possible. but they have very different flavours. If you have basil, lime zest, or lemon balm that would be the best. lime zest generally works best (perhaps combined with basil to evoke both herbal and citrus notes), at a ratio of one lime’s zest per eight curry leaves. or even a couple of Bay leaves.
Thank you so much for this recipe Richa. It’s my new comfort food.
I’m so glad, yay!
Made it yesterday. It was really good. Thanks so much Richa.
thanks!
I am not a big fan of quinoa. I was going to trash my cooked quinoa when I found your recipe. This recipe turned out SO YUMMY!! I switched up the veggies slightly – I used onion, green beans, asparagus and cabbage. I cut all veggies finely and sautéed them. IT WAS AMAZING! Thank you for this inspiring recipe..
awesome! Thanks!
My wife didn’t like quinoa that much but it changed with this recipe, thanks to you!
If anybody is reading this comment, go and try this as soon as possible : simple, tasty and quick to prepare!
I always forget to comment here but many of your recipes are now favourites in my family so thank you again!
awesome! thats my goal, to get everyone to like some plant foods in various ways!
Delicious and versatile!
Woke up early this morning and was looking at some random stuff via my iPad. Happily I landed on this site and saw this recipie. It reminded me of when my grandmother would make rava upma . Looking around I found that I had all the ingredients except cilantro (go figure we always have some) and carrots, but I did have some broccoli/carrot slaw so that was a find substitute.
Anyway, it worked out so well that I have ordered your cookbook via Amazon. Thank you for what you do Ms. Richa
Awesome!