Roasted tomato and garlic sounds like a pasta dish, right? How about using quinoa instead? It’s mild nutty flavor picks up all of these flavors so well. The sweet basil with the sweet and acidic tomatoes, slightly bitter garlic topped with sweet and sour balsamic glaze makes for a perfectly balanced flavor combo. It’s great as a family style dish at a party with it’s pretty presentation. It’s vegan, gluten-free and dairy-free so you can please a lot of guests with this roasted tomato garlic quinoa dish.
The recipe calls for cooked quinoa. Here is my post How to Cook Quinoa with step-by-step instructions and a quick how-to video. You can cook the quinoa even several days ahead of time as it will keep in the fridge for a week or more. Any time I make quinoa I cook a big batch and re-purpose it several different times by mixing it up with different flavors. It’s great for breakfast in this quinoa breakfast bowl recipe on my blog.
The roasted tomatoes do take a long time and I am usually a fan of quick easy recipes. But you can just put them in the oven and walk away for an hour. The roasting process concentrates the sweetness in the tomatoes and makes it so worth the wait. Be sure that you wait for that first hour before adding the garlic to the pan. Garlic has less water so it will cook much quicker.
Serving Ideas
This roasted tomato garlic quinoa dish makes for a beautiful presentation. The green and red, drizzled with balsamic glaze will have everyone reaching for this dish. I topped mine with pine nuts but pine nuts have gotten even more pricey than usual. Walnuts or toasted almonds are a great substitute but any nut or seed will do the trick of adding some nice texture to this quinoa dish.
This dish is perfect if you are serving vegetarians. Top with some crumbled feta cheese or shaved Parmesan for a complete meal. Serve as a side dish with grilled fish or roasted chicken. There are so many possibilities, Enjoy!
Roasted Tomato Garlic Quinoa
This quinoa recipe has sweet tomatoes and basil with sweet and sour balsamic glaze and bitter garlic for a perfect flavor combo.
Ingredients
- 1½ c cooked quinoa
- 3 Tbsps olive oil
- 8 oz grape or cherry tomatoes
- 4-5 cloves of garlic
- chopped green onion
- ¼ c balsamic glaze
- 2 oz fresh basil leaves
- ⅓ c pine nuts or chopped walnuts
- salt
Instructions
- Pre-heat the oven to 300°F.
- Check out my blog post with a video and step-by-step instructions on How to Cook Quinoa or the link below to my YouTube video.
- Cut the tomatoes in half and peel the garlic.
- Toss the tomato and garlic in 1 Tbsp of the olive oil. Lay the tomatoes only, on a sheet pan (not the garlic yet), cut side up and roast for 1 hour. Then add the garlic to the sheet pan and roast another 30 minutes.
- In a large mixing bowl add 2 Tbsps olive oil. Add the warm garlic cloves and smash them with a spoon to combine with the oil. Add 1/2 tsp salt (add a pinch or 2 extra if you did not salt the quinoa when cooking it) and stir. Add the quinoa, roasted tomatoes and chopped green onion and stir well.
- Plate the mixture, drizzle with balsamic glaze and top with lots of leaves of fresh basil and pine nuts or walnuts.
Nutrition Information
Yield 4 Serving Size 1/2 cupAmount Per Serving Calories 353Total Fat 21gSaturated Fat 2gTrans Fat 0gUnsaturated Fat 17gCholesterol 0mgSodium 166mgCarbohydrates 39gFiber 4gSugar 19gProtein 6g
This website is written and produced for informational purposes only. I am not a certified nutritionist and the nutritional data on this site has not been evaluated or approved by a nutritionist or the Food and Drug Administration. Nutritional information is offered as a courtesy and should not be construed as a guarantee. The data is calculated using information from the Nutritionix database. Although I do my best to provide accurate nutritional information, these figures should be considered estimates only. Varying factors such as product types or brands purchased, natural fluctuations in fresh produce, and the way ingredients are processed change the effective nutritional information in any given recipe. Furthermore, different online calculators provide different results depending on their own nutrition fact sources and algorithms. To obtain the most accurate nutritional information in a given recipe, you should calculate the nutritional information with the actual ingredients used in your recipe, using your preferred nutrition calculator.
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