Chia Porridge “Pudding”: A Radical Radiance Recipe

People often ask me what my favorite meals are, and though I’m a person who prefers variety and so I don’t have a ton of “staples”, chia is definitely a staple in my diet.

Chia is a protein-rich food, and as a long-term herbivore who likes to be physically active, protein is very important to me. Chia is high in protein, high in omegas and many other nutrients, and one of my favorite things about it is that it keeps me feeling satiated for a long time. I like to have a bit of protein in the mornings. One of my mentors, Gabriel Cousens, M.D., teaches that protein in the morning boosts serotonin for women, and you sure as heck know I want that. My deepest love, spirulina, doesn’t always appeal first thing in the morning (gasp, I admitted there is a minute in the day where sometimes I don’t feel like spirulina!!), but chia does.

I sometimes have chia in smoothies (do I sense another recipe soon?), but this recipe is all about the goopy, smooth, delicious pudding-ness of chia porridge. The easiest way to think of how to make chia delicious is to think of it like oatmeal. The same things that taste good in oatmeal taste great in chia pudding.

What I’ve done for today is give you first the basic chia recipe, and then provide recommendations for toppings. Perhaps in the future I’ll make more specific types of chia recipes, but here’s the start. And don’t be mistaken — the quick simple chia recipe is great on it’s own, especially in a hurry. Simple doesn’t mean boring here, for sure.

Basic Chia Porridge Recipe

serves 1

Ingredients:

2 heaping TBS chia seeds

3/4 cup almond milk (or if you want to get fancy, other nut milks taste great too)

8 drops clear SweetLeaf liquid stevia

Directions:

1. Mix chia with nut milk and let soak for at least 30 minutes. Chia seeds will expand a ton, which is why you need the soaking time. It can actually be a time-saver to make it the night before and let it soak overnight rather than having to keep watching it so you can pack it up/put it away/eat it). If chia seems chunky, give it a whisk around and it will homogenize.

2. Add stevia and mix in. Add more stevia to the level of sweetness you want, adding 2 drops at a time, mixing it, and tasting it. I love using stevia rather than other sweeteners in any recipe I can because it doesn’t impact your blood sugar and yet tastes sweet. The company SweetLeaf is my favorite; they have a high-quality process for producing their stevia. I do not recommend Truvia, which is owned by Coca-Cola and is highly processed.

Tips:

A) You can always add more nut milk to the porridge if you prefer it to be a little more liquidous. The texture is personal. Wait until this amount of almond milk has soaked in for a while though (at least the 30 min), before adding more.

B) You can add tons of things to chia! Here are some examples of fruits, superfoods, nuts, spices, etc:

-Cut fruit. My favorite is blueberries.

-Nuts, preferably cut smaller (see my variation below; I used slivered almonds) as well as nut butter

-Superfood powders like lucuma, maca, and raw cacao powder

-Spices such as cinnamon, cardamom, vanilla, and ginger

For my breakfast (right), I added to my chia porridge some stevia to sweeten, a few frozen (but defrosted) blackberries, about 1 TBS of slivered almonds, and 1 tsp cacao powder. My apologies for the photo; I’m going to have to get better at capturing chia recipes… trust me it’s delicious!!

I’d love to hear from you — what do you like to put in your chia porridge? Any fun combinations you’ve found?

Love, Courtney