Quinoa Salad (More Information)

This quinoa salad is fairly flexible. Although the suggestion in the recipe is to use pineapple juice to fry things up, any liquid could be used, including any kind of broth, tomato juice or, for something really different, even plain rice milk (not the vanilla flavorings and when using rice milk be sure to use more of the milk than you would pineapple juice). If you are looking to cut back on the sweetness of the salad, fry the rest of the non-quinoa ingredients in broth as well.

Not only are the non-quinoa ingredients optional - so is the quinoa. Instead of quinoa, you could use rice or wild rice. Quinoa however has more crunch to it and will maintain that crunch better than other grains once chilled (that's largely because quinoa is higher in protein than most other cereal grains). Also quinoa is higher in protein that rice or wild rice which makes this a little bit heartier when quinoa is used.

Although referred to as frying in this recipe, what is actually happening to the pineapple, carrots and onions is caramelization. The heat will burn the sugars in all these foods. If timed just right (about ten minutes) there will be a deep sweetness from the carrot, a spicier sweetness from the onion and a light sweetness from the pineapple. (If cooked too long they will burn.) Visually, these will be done when the pineapple, carrots and onions have turned brown but not quite black.