🇵🇪 PeruCatalog recipe · Cusco
A rustic highland soup where quinoa thickens a gently spiced vegetable broth — humble, nourishing and entirely plant-based.
For 4 servings.
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Rinse the quinoa under running water until it stops foaming.
💡 The rinse washes off saponin, the natural coating that tastes bitter and soapy.
Soften the onion, garlic, carrot and celery in the oil over medium heat for 5 minutes.
Stir in the grated tomato, cumin and oregano and cook 2 minutes until the pan smells sweet.
Add the water, quinoa and a good pinch of salt. Bring to a boil and simmer 10 minutes.
Add the potatoes and simmer another 15 minutes, until they are tender and the quinoa has uncurled its little tails.
💡 The spiral germ popping free is quinoa's built-in doneness signal.
Adjust the salt, ladle into bowls and finish with parsley.
Quinoa fed the Andes for five thousand years before the world discovered it, and in Cusco's mountain villages it still goes into the everyday soup pot rather than the salad bowl. This is the warming, one-pot lunch of the altiplano, made from whatever the field and market provide.
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