How To Cook With Chia Seeds

The chia seeds are fashionable, especially as an ingredient for puddings and porridges, thanks to the mucilage release liquid in which say. Any vegetable drink can be turned into a pudding in a short time without having to cook anything.

But they can be used for many more things, from finishing any dish with a good handful on top to adding them to cake and bread doughs or taking advantage of these characteristics to make other preparations.

Chia preparations (not pudding)

Today I invite you to try chia seeds as a base for making jams, ice creams and bars. Because not everything is going to be puddings, right?

1. Jams without sugar

When making jams, we control the amount of pectin so that the final result has the slightly gelatinous consistency that a good jam should have. Pectin needs good amounts of sugar to gel, and it is not available in all fruits, so you have to add it separately or mix fruits with pectin and without pectin.

With chia seeds we can imitate the texture that pectin gives thanks to the gel they form with water. Instead of adding sugar and pectin or other fruit, we can use any fruit, high in pectin or not, chia seeds and water. So what we have is a jam in which we only use fruit and chia, without sugar.

The consistency is not exactly the same, but it is very similar, it can be spread very well and the flavor does not change. Of course, if you do not want to find the seeds you will have to crush them very well before adding them or making the gel separately. If you don’t mind that your jam has a bit of a crunchy texture, make it as is. For instance.

Strawberry jam with chia

Ingredients

• 2 kg of ripe strawberries (that are very sweet)
• 2 tablespoons chia seeds
• 1 cup of water

Preparation

1. Wash the strawberries very well and cut them into small pieces.
2. Put them in a saucepan over low heat, cover and cook for 5 minutes, until the strawberries begin to fall apart.
3. Add the water and chia seeds, stir very well and put it over high heat until it starts to boil.
4. Lower the heat and, stirring regularly, let it reduce and the strawberries fall apart. The liquid will also thicken.
5. When the sauce is thick (about 10 minutes), remove it from the heat and let it cool. Once cooled it will thicken a bit more.
6. Store it in the fridge.

You can make other jams with this same method using other seasonal fruits, for example cherries, peaches, figs, etc.

2. Ice cream

If we want to improve the texture and viscosity of homemade ice creams, especially if we make them only from fruits, vegetable yogurt, etc., we can use whole chia seeds, ground or just chia gel.

For example, we can make chia gel (1 teaspoon and ½ glass of vegetable drink) and freeze a couple of bananas in pieces. Then you just have to pass it through the blender all together. Voila! A much creamier nice-cream with little seeds.

For chocolate, vanilla ice creams, etc., we can make the chia gel by heating it in a saucepan and then straining it to use only the liquid. This liquid, once cold, we beat it with the rest of the ingredients and proceed with the ice cream in the normal way.

As they do not add flavor, we can use the amount we need. Remember that if you go over adding your ice cream it can be gritty.

Forest berry ice cream with chia

Ingredients

• 125 g raspberries
• 100 g of blackberries
• 100 g of blueberries
• 1 soy yogurt
• 1 tablespoon chia seeds
• 100 ml of vegetable drink (rice, almonds or whatever you want)

Preparation

1. Wash the fruits, dry them well and freeze them.
2. Mix the yogurt with the vegetable drink and chia seeds and leave it in the fridge.
3. Beat the frozen fruits with the yogurt mixture with the mixer until it is a frozen cream.
4. Serve as is.

3. Bars

Making bars that you can take anywhere is one of the best ways to eat all kinds of seeds. Packing them all in one snack is easier.

When they are baked bars, you can make chia gel (1 teaspoon of chia in half a glass of water) to act as a binder for all the ingredients (along with some more, such as dates, chocolate, etc). You can also add them as is and make them crisp.

As we are in summer and I understand that you do not feel like baking anything, I will give you a recipe for example bars, without baking.

Dried fruit bars with chia and sesame

Ingredients

• 8 dates
• 75 g of dark chocolate (minimum 75% cocoa)
• 4 tablespoons chia seeds
• ½ cup peeled walnuts
• ½ cup of peeled almonds
• 1 tablespoon of sesame seeds

Preparation

1. Remove the pits from the dates.
2. Chop the chocolate and melt it in a double boiler.
3. Put the dates, seeds and nuts in the blender and beat everything together for 1 minute, just enough to crush it and there are no large pieces.
4. Transfer the mixture to the bowl with the melted chocolate, mix it very well and pour it on a board or a baking pan with parchment paper. Make sure there are no lumps and give it a rectangular shape. Flatten the surface well to make it tight.
5. Let it cool down and put it in the fridge to fully solidify.
6. Cut it into bars and you have it.