These Sweet and Sour Quinoa Balls are great for packed lunches, as a snack or as part of a main meal.
Sweet and Sour oozes kid appeal and these Sweet and Sour Quinoa Balls are no different. Cooked in pineapple juice, vinegar, ginger, garlic, tomato paste and low sodium soy sauce (optional) the quinoa soaks up all the delicious flavours and truly tastes amazing!
I make a lot of different quinoa balls, like these tomato and basil balls, as I find them perfect to have in the fridge to snack on or to serve in a lunch box. This version has to be the boys’ favourite – they really don’t last long!
If you are doing baby-led weaning then these are a perfect finger food. You can just leave out the soy sauce to reduce the sodium levels. I would also make sure to chop the pineapple finely so that there are no big chunks. Cooking them in a ball format saves a lot of mess! I used to hate trying to clean up tiny grains of quinoa when Rory was a baby!
Sweet and Sour Quinoa Balls
Ingredients
- 1 tbsp oil
- 1 red onion finely chopped
- 2 garlic cloves finely chopped
- 1 tsp finely chopped ginger
- 2 tbsp white wine vinegar
- 1 tbsp low sodium soy sauce* (optional)
- 1 tbsp tomato paste
- 1/2 cup pineapple juice
- 1/2 cup water
- 1/2 cup quinoa (rinsed)
- 100 g (approx. 2 rings) pineapple chopped into small pieces **
- 1 beaten egg
Instructions
- Pre heat oven to 180c/ 350f / Gas 4.
- Heat oil in pan over medium / high heat. Reduce heat and gently fry the onion until softened (approx. 5 mins). Add the garlic and ginger and fry for a further min. To the onions and garlic, add the vinegar, soy sauce, tomato paste, pineapple juice, water and quinoa then stir.
- Bring to the boil, reduce the heat to low, cover and allow to simmer for 15 mins.
- Turn the heat off and leave the quinoa to sit covered for a further 5 mins.
- Stir in the chopped pineapple.
- Allow to cool and then stir in the beaten egg.
- Form approx.13 heaped tablespoon sized balls and place on a silicon mat / lined baking tray.
- Cook in the oven for 20 mins or until golden.
Recipe Notes
* If making for baby then you can leave out the soy sauce to reduce sodium level
** If making for a baby / young toddler then make sure to chop the pineapple finely to avoid choking.
Hi. Do these freeze well please?
Hi Esther, yes they freeze well. I freeze them and pop them in my son’s lunch box ??
Hi, could you substitute the quinoa with anything else, e.g. couscous?
Hi Josie, you probably could but the cooking times would vary greatly. I would have to test it out using different grains before I could say for sure, sorry.
Hello 🙂 great recipe . With what can we replace the pineapple please? Can’t find it in here
Hi Nada, I’m not sure how it will work without the pineapple. It adds a lot of sweetness to the dish and I used both the juice and fruit. You could perhaps try mango but without trying it I can’t say how it would work.
Hi Amy, found your blog yesterday and have already made the Banana Blueberry Waffles, Carrot & Apple Muffins and these Sweet & sour Quinoa Balls.
The muffins were nice, I used wholemeal flour and they tasted a little ‘floury’, also for my family I would prefer them a tiny little bit sweeter. Would you suggest an extra banana? I don’t mind adding a tablespoon of honey so might try that.
The Waffles were good (had no blueberries), the banana taste was a little lost but the consistency was good, might chop up little bits of banana and add them at the end to enhance the taste.
Made the Quinoa balls tonight and whilst the flavour was good they were wet in the middle and fell apart despite cooking them for 30 mins. The mixture was pretty wet when I made the balls too, maybe I need a bit more quinoa to mop up the juice? What do you think?
I made these quinoa balls for my 8 month old. They were surprisingly good, and baby liked them as well, but they were very crumbly and fell apart too easily, leaving me with a huge mess to clean up. I was hoping these would allow my baby to eat quinoa with less clean-up than usual, but that was definitely not the case. It seems like they’re missing an additional ingredient to better bind the quinoa together.
Hi, Sorry you didn’t have much luck with the texture of the balls. I found these were great for limiting less mess when serving quinoa. I never had an issue with them crumbling. Did you watch the video – did the mixture look the same when forming into balls? I wonder if your mixture was too wet? Did you chill and add a beaten egg before forming into balls? Did they form into balls easily? I can’t think what else could have gone wrong.
I made them again, and yes, the mixture was wetter than the one in the video, once I’ve added the pineapple and egg. I did try chilling it this time, but it didn’t seem to make much of a difference. I ended up adding some millet flakes to the mix to firm it up a bit, and it did help, although it was still very crumbly inside!