Hot Quinoa Drink Recipe

I tasted quinoa drink during my trip to Peru last year. During our trip deep into the Amazon forest, we carried the cook and all our food and drinks with us and stayed in tree houses without hot water or lighting after the electricity stored by solar energy ran out at night. The cook who came with us had prepared three delicious meals of Peruvian cuisine for us during the day. One of them was this quinoa drink he prepared for breakfast. When I tasted it, I had no expectation of liking it. To be more honest, I was actually expecting to dislike it. But it didn't happen that way.

It tasted and smelled just like asure. Since I love asure, I also loved this drink. I immediately asked how it was done. The guide and translator next to us said that it was made only from quinoa, water and sugar. The cook was at a point far from me and through word of mouth through others in the group I was told that milk was also available. Then it was said that it was not there. The topic changed because no one else was as interested as I was. I didn't force it, thinking I would find it on Google anyway.

It was one of the first recipes I researched after I returned from Peru. Yes, I found a few recipes on Google, but none of them looked anything like what I drank. Most had a yellowish colour, the one I drank was white. However, I tried the recipes I found first. In terms of taste, it didn't even come close to what I drank in Peru. So I realized that our cook had a special touch. Based on its color and taste, I thought it might be milk. In my next attempts, I continued with milk and achieved better results. Recipes on Google mainly used apples and pineapple. But when I used pineapple, its smell was overpowering. A pineapple flavored drink wasn't what I wanted. I was looking for a drink like asure, where the taste of no ingredient was dominant and all the ingredients together create a distinct flavor. In one of these experiments, I added sweetened condensed milk, which is used quite frequently in South America, instead of sugar. With its caramel-like aroma, I achieved the best taste I could achieve without knowing the exact recipe.

Actually, there is no huge difference between recipes using sugar and sweetened condensed milk. But since it was a special taste I was trying to achieve, there was a bit of a difference for me. Since this is a special situation for me, I cannot say that you should definitely use sweetened condensed milk. For someone who is not looking for a specific flavor, sugar will do the same thing. It would be better to just add it little by little and check the taste and adjust it according to your taste.

You can consider hot quinoa drink as an alternative to hot chocolate.

I mentioned sugar above, but I would like to point out that you should also adjust the amount of cinnamon according to your taste.

Enjoy the recipe...

Enjoy your meal...