If someone would have told me two years ago that my favorite thing to eat in the morning would soon be a quinoa breakfast, I would’ve probably laughed. Or snorted. Less elegant, but I am being transparent here.

It wasn’t until I came upon Dr. Greger’s daily dozen that I actually started putting quinoa into my diet. (With the recipe that I’ll share with you today, you can check off 7 of 24 checkmarks!)

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My Quinoa breakfast porridge

I used to be a big fan of oatmeal porridge for breakfast. But at some point, my stomach decided we simply do not like oats all that much anymore. So I needed a replacement. My husband suggested quinoa, because of its’ numerous health benefits.

But honestly, I had no idea how to prepare quinoa for breakfast. And at the time, I couldn’t find too many healthy quinoa breakfast recipes tickling my fancy.

I simply wanted to stick to porridge.

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So I first asked myself:

Can quinoa be used as porridge?

As I quickly found: Heck yeah! Quinoa can be used for anything, really. From quinoa chocolate cookies to a side dish for your bean chili – quinoa works.

The second, also very important question that came to mind was:

But what does quinoa porridge taste like?

I remembered quinoa as having a weird taste. So naturally, I, wondered how to get to all the health benefits without having to go through tasting that every morning.

Luckily there is a super easy solution on how to make quinoa porridge taste good: Simply cook it together with anything else that has a taste you like. It will absolutely overshadow the quinoa taste.

Oh, and wash the seeds thoroughly before you cook them! If there is any doubt on how to prepare quinoa, remember this.

Always. Wash it. Thoroughly.

Okay. Time to cut to the chase. Let’s get to my actual Quinoa breakfast recipe:

How to make healthy quinoa porridge with coconut milk

Yes, with coconut milk! The creaminess… But I’m getting ahead of myself. You will need the following things for my vegan quinoa porridge.

Ingredients

  • 1/2 cup quinoa
  • 1 cup water
  • 1 cup coconut milk (not the milky part, rather the watery one)
  • a middle-sized banana
  • a crunchy apple
  • 1 Tablespoon of ground cinnamon (Ceylon!)
  • 1 Tablespoon of ground flax seeds/flaxseed flour
  • a pinch of Vanilla
  • a handful of berries you like (I love raspberries for this!)
  • a handful of nuts you like
Image of cut up apples and a spoonful of cinnamon for the quinoa breakfast porridge

Time to make our quinoa breakfast!

I already told you how to prepare quinoa – simply wash it. For like a minute or so. Once that is done, put the quinoa and the cup of water to boil in a pot on full heat. Not too small of a pot, you will add all the other ingredients a little later.

Next, mash your banana and mix it with the cinnamon, the flax seed flour, and the vanilla till it’s one gooey mass. (It will be way more appetizing soon, I promise!) Now you can add the coconut milk and mix everything very well again.

Clean the apple and cut it in smaller pieces. If you use fresh berries, those will need a wash, too. I admit, I mostly have them in my freezer, so I skip that step.

Image of the quinoa porridge cooking in a pot

The next step should happen when the quinoa to water ratio in your pot is pretty much 1:0. Almost all water should be soaked up or evaporated. Then it’s time to just drop everything into the pot and lower the heat to about half or even lower, depending on your stove.

To not forget anything: You now put the gooey mass, the apple, the berries, and the nuts into the pot. Leave it on for about 5 minutes and make sure to mix it regularly! This can get messy quite quickly if you don’t watch it. Speaking from experience here.

Possible variations

As I have been eating this quinoa breakfast for many months by now, I have also experimented a little with it. Some variations I recommend you try are those:

  • Add some cocoa. I don’t think that needs explanation, does it? I do recommend organic cocoa powder, of course.
  • Mix things up with a little peanut butter. From my experience, it should really only be a little though. Otherwise, it only tastes like peanut butter and nothing else. Which doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Just saying.
  • You can completely leave out the coconut milk and either use another milk or simply water. I do that when I ran out of coconut milk or really don’t feel like that much fat.

Soooo…Try it! It really is a healthy and tasty breakfast. And as usual, if you try it, I would love to hear about it!

One of my favorite sweet quinoa recipes is this breakfast quinoa porridge. Not only is it super healthy, it's also quite quickly made and tastes creamy and fruity..

And if you liked it, I’m sure others would also love to hear about it, so don’t hesitate to share this recipe.