Parmesan Quinoa Bites

Quinoa. Have you heard about it? It's a little cooking secret that more people should need to know about.

Quinoa (pronounced "keen-wa") is a protein packed grain. It also has fiber, calcium, and iron. That's a lot of nutrition in such a little grain! Also, it's easier and faster to cook than brown rice!

I found this recipe on Pinterest and had pinned it under my "Clean Eating" board. I had wanted to try these, but then forgot about them. Then I bought the ingredients...and never made them. Well, I'm in my new kitchen, so I have been motivated to cook even more! Here they are! Yummy and delicious

Parmesan Quinoa Bites

Ingredients:

• 2 1/2 cups of cooked quinoa (instead of preparing quinoa with water like the package suggests, use chicken broth. so much tastier!)
• 3 large eggs
• 3 stalks of green onion, sliced thin
• 1 cup grated carrots
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/3 cup fresh parsley, chopped
• 3/4 cup parmesan cheese, plus extra to sprinkle on top
• 3 Tbsp rice flour (or regular flour if you’re not GF)
• 1/4 tsp salt (more if you use water to make your quinoa. otherwise, the chicken broth adds enough salt.)
• 1/4 tsp pepper

Directions: 

1. Preheat oven to 350 (fahrenheit). 
2. Combine all of your ingredients in a large bowl (except for the extra parmesan for the top of each bite) and mix well.  
3. Spray your muffin tins entirely with cooking spray (don’t skimp on the spray or your bites will stick).  
4. Scoop out enough mixture to fill your standard muffin tins 3/4 full.  
5. Sprinkle more parmesan cheese on top of each muffin tin portion.  
6. Bake in over for 20-30 minutes.  
7. Ready when slightly browned on top and a fairly browned crust on bottom and sides has formed.  

(The charm of these bites is the nice and crispy, almost chewy, crust around all the edges.  The cheese melts and bakes into the sides….and oh my, it’s heavenly.  So don’t remove too early…..but you don’t want them burnt and dried out either.  So watch them carefully!)

Happy cooking AND clean eating!