30 Quinoa Recipes That Go Against the Grain

While these quinoa recipes are decidedly recipes, did you know that quinoa is not *exactly* a grain? It’s a member of the goosefoot family, which sounds like a British TV drama but is actually a plant family that includes veg like Swiss chard, beets, and spinach. Quinoa has become popular in health food aisles over the past 20-ish years, which has affected farmers in complicated ways, but it’s long been a staple crop in South America since before 3,000 B.C.E., when it was cultivated by the Incas in the Andean region. Quinoa is now commonly referred to as a grain because we use the versatile little seeds as such, in quinoatmeal (the breakfast remix we love to see), cherry-laced energy bars, hearty salads, plant-based burgers, toast-worthy soda bread, and more. With this collection of quinoa recipes, it’s impossible to get bored of the ancient, uh, not-quite-grain.