How to Cook Quinoa | Ratio, Rinsing, Salads and Gluten

One part quinoa, two parts water, a lid and 12 minutes. Seven of our 13 quinoa recipes cook it at that ratio, and it takes about a third of the time brown rice does.

What happens after the 12 minutes is where the recipes differ: cooled for a salad, mixed into a burger, or, in one case, not cooked at all and blended into bread.

The short answer: use 1 part quinoa to 2 parts water. Bring it to a boil, cover, turn it down and simmer for 12 minutes, then take it off the heat. That’s the ratio in seven of our recipes, and it matches the Whole Grains Council’s 12 to 15 minutes.

For salads, let it cool first. If the bag doesn’t say it’s been washed or rinsed, rinse it: the outer layer carries bitter saponins.

Quinoa is naturally gluten-free, and in a small 6-week trial, 19 people with celiac disease ate it every day without their condition getting worse. If you need it strictly gluten-free, buy it labeled gluten-free, because quinoa can pick up traces of barley in the field, while it dries or in the sack.

How to Cook Quinoa: The Ratio and the Time

How to cook quinoa using a 1 to 2 quinoa-to-water ratio and about 12 minutes of simmering

The Whole Grains Council gives 2 cups of liquid for every cup of quinoa and 12 to 15 minutes, for about 3 cups cooked. Our recipes use the same ratio, scaled down:

Put ½ cup quinoa and 1 cup (240 ml) water in a small saucepan and bring it to a boil.
Cover, turn the heat down and simmer for 12 minutes.
Take it off the heat and let it cool for a while before it goes into a salad or bowl.
America’s Test Kitchen. Quinoa pilaf with herbs and lemon. View

Our sweet potato quinoa burgers add one step: after 12 to 15 minutes, the pot sits off the heat for 5 minutes so the quinoa can absorb any water that’s left.

Chickpea quinoa salad with peaches, tomatoes and cucumber in a wooden bowl

Should You Rinse Quinoa?

Why quinoa should be rinsed when the package does not say it has been pre-washed, to remove bitter saponins

If the bag doesn’t say it’s been washed or rinsed, yes. Quinoa’s outer layer carries saponins, compounds that taste bitter and astringent (the name comes from the Latin for soap). A 2018 review lists washing and pearling (scouring the outer layer off), alone or together, as the ways processors remove them, and most quinoa is washed before it’s sold.

It matters most in our no-yeast quinoa bread, where the soaked quinoa is blended raw. A bitter loaf is the most common complaint with that recipe, and the fix is to rinse the soaked quinoa until the water runs completely clear. For cooked quinoa, rinse it in a fine sieve under running water.

Quinoa for Salad: Cool It First

How to prepare quinoa for salad by cooking it and letting it cool before mixing with vegetables and dressing

Salads are where we use quinoa most: 6 of our 13 quinoa recipes are salads, and all 6 let the quinoa cool before it’s tossed with the vegetables and dressing. Four cook it with the 1 to 2 ratio. The other two, our bean salads, simmer it with the vegetables for 15 minutes and drain it like pasta. In every one, the quinoa is the starch that turns a bowl of vegetables into a meal.

Chickpea quinoa salad with peaches: chickpeas, cucumber, tomatoes, dill and peaches.
Avocado quinoa salad with roasted peppers: beans, corn and peppers with lemon and cumin.
Easy summer quinoa salad: tomato, cucumber and olives.
Roasted peppers quinoa salad with chickpeas: 10 to 12 minutes of simmering, then cooled, with a tahini dressing.

If yours comes out mushy, the usual culprit is too much water: America’s Test Kitchen found most quinoa recipes call for nearly twice the liquid they need. Use a little less next time.

Bowl of summer quinoa salad with tomatoes, cucumber, greens and olives

What We Make With Quinoa

How WellnessDove uses quinoa in salads, bowls, stuffed vegetables, burgers, soup and bread

What we make	Recipes
Salads	6
Bowls, one sweet and one savory	2
Stuffed vegetables	2
Burgers	1
Soup	1
Bread	1

Two of our recipes cook quinoa with red lentils. Our lentil and quinoa stuffed squash simmers ½ cup of quinoa with red lentils for 10 minutes, then adds corn and peas for 5 more, and the zucchini boats simmer the two together for 15 minutes. The roasted cauliflower quinoa beet bowl uses the same 12-minute quinoa with roasted vegetables and greens.

Two roasted squash halves filled with quinoa, red lentils, corn and peas

Quinoa Bread Without Flour

How soaked raw quinoa can be blended into a flourless no-yeast bread with oats, baking powder and vinegar

One of our quinoa recipes doesn’t cook the quinoa first at all. Our no-yeast quinoa bread soaks a cup of quinoa overnight, rinses it, and blends it raw with a cup of water. Then 1½ cups of quick oats, baking powder, vinegar and salt go in, and the loaf bakes for about an hour. There’s no flour and no yeast.

Don’t expect much rise. “Since this recipe doesn’t use yeast and contains no gluten, the rise is more subtle compared to traditional breads,” Venny told a reader whose loaf stayed low. If yours stays lower than you’d like, check that the baking powder is fresh.

It’s one of the loaves in our guide to bread without flour, and one of the quick-oat recipes in our oats guide.

Sliced quinoa and oat bread topped with sunflower and pumpkin seeds

Quinoa vs Brown Rice Nutrition

USDA’s figures for both, cooked, per 100 grams:

Per 100 g cooked	Quinoa	Brown rice
Fiber	2.8 g	1.6 g
Magnesium	64 mg	39 mg
Iron	1.5 mg	0.6 mg
Folate	42 µg	9 µg
Potassium	172 mg	86 mg
Protein	4.4 g	2.7 g
Carbohydrate	21.3 g	25.6 g

Gram for gram, quinoa has more fiber, magnesium, iron, folate and potassium than brown rice. Brown rice has more manganese, selenium and niacin, which aren’t in the table. Both are good starch bases for a meal; our brown rice vs white rice guide covers rice in detail.

Is Quinoa Gluten-Free?

Quinoa is naturally gluten-free, but people with celiac disease should choose quinoa labeled gluten-free to reduce cross-contact risk

Yes, naturally. Quinoa is a seed, not a grass like wheat, barley or rye. For someone with celiac disease, two narrower questions matter: do some varieties carry gluten-like proteins, and can the seed pick up gluten on its way to you?

Some varieties react in the lab. In a 2012 study of 15 quinoa varieties, 11 had no measurable amount of the protein fragments that trigger celiac disease, and the other 4 had amounts far under the gluten-free limit. Two of those 4, though, set off a gluten-like immune response in lab tests on cells and gut tissue from some of the celiac patients tested.

It can also pick up gluten on the way. Quinoa is sometimes grown near barley, covered with barley while it dries, or shipped in sacks that held barley. Other naturally gluten-free grains show how often that kind of contact happens: in a 2010 US test of 22 grains, seeds and flours that weren’t labeled gluten-free, 7 had 20 parts per million of gluten or more, enough to fail a gluten-free label. Quinoa wasn’t among those tested, and six of the 7 were flours.

From Venny, a medical doctor and a specialist in Nutrition and Dietetics: for most people with celiac disease, quinoa is a welcome addition. You can’t tell the variety from the bag, so what matters most is how people with celiac disease do on it. In a 2014 trial, 19 of them added 50 grams of quinoa a day to their gluten-free diet for 6 weeks. Their blood tests stayed in the normal range, and in the 10 who had biopsies before and after, the gut lining was no worse.

Nine had mild to moderate stomach symptoms in the first 2 weeks, which looked related to the extra fiber. It was a small trial with no comparison group, so it’s reassuring, not final.

If you need it strictly gluten-free, buy quinoa labeled gluten-free. In the US, that label means less than 20 parts per million of gluten, which is your best protection against cross-contact. If symptoms carry on past the first couple of weeks, or come back, take quinoa out and tell your doctor. Celiac damage can be silent, so your doctor may want to check your antibody levels.

Venny is a medical doctor and a specialist in Nutrition and Dietetics; Andy holds a master’s degree in psychology. This is general information rather than medical advice.

Where to Start With Quinoa

Cook ½ cup of quinoa in a cup of water tonight, let it cool, put it in the fridge, and make our chickpea quinoa salad with peaches tomorrow. And the next time you want bread, soak a cup overnight for our quinoa bread.

And, always, seek health consciously.