Quinoa Stuffed Tomatoes

Healthy stuffed tomatoes baked with quinoa, spinach, and chickpeas are a beautiful and delicious way to enjoy one of summer’s best crops – tomatoes!

Fresh juicy tomatoes must be one of summer’s greatest pleasures. Especially when you grown them in the backyard and eat them straight from the vine, sweet and warm from the sun. You may remember we’ve used our homegrown tomatoes for Fresh Tomato Marinara, Salsa, Tomato Soup, and Bruschetta! While we don’t have a veggie garden set up at our new house yet, we will still be enjoying farmer’s market (and let’s be real, Trader Joe’s) tomatoes over the next few months. 

One especially fun way to show of tomatoes is to scoop out the insides and fill with lots of good stuff. This time we stuffed them with quinoa, spinach, the tomato pulp, and chickpeas. This recipe was inspired by a Greek stuffed tomato recipe I found while looking over a fun cookbook (Amazon Affiliate link, just FYI) Opa! The Healthy Greek Cookbook. Meals are just so fun when they’re stuffed, aren’t they? I mean, we can’t forget Mushroom Quinoa Stuffed Acorn Squash, Taco Quinoa Stuffed Bell Peppers, and Lasagna Stuffed Portobello Mushrooms! Okay, let’s check out how to make these easy quinoa stuffed tomatoes. 

How to Make Baked Stuffed Tomatoes

Step 1: Prep Your Tomatoes

You can use anywhere from 5 to 7 tomatoes for this recipe. I used 5 medium sized while photographing this recipe and had extra filling… that I enjoyed on its own for lunch. Cut the tops off the tomatoes and scoop the insides out into a bowl. Don’t discard it though, it adds great flavor to the quinoa filling. 

Step 2: Cook the Quinoa 

We’ve talked a lot about cooking quinoa here in the past. If you haven’t read our post How to Cook Quinoa + Best Quinoa Recipes, give it a click! There’s also a post about cooking chickpeas from scratch too you may be interested in (though I used pre-cooked chickpeas here). I most often cook quinoa in the Instant Pot, but as we are using tomatoes here, I used the stove (tomatoes tend to stick to the bottom of the Instant Pot and trigger the burn notice). The quinoa goes into a medium saucepan with some water and the tomato pulp. As tomatoes are more or less juicy, you may have to continue to cook the quinoa over low heat to cook off some excess liquid. 

Step 4: Stir in the Greens & Chickpeas

I love adding baby spinach or arugula here. There are other options for veggies though. The recipe this one was inspired from cooked zucchini in with the quinoa, which sounds fantastic. At this point the filling is ready to eat. Taste it and make sure it’s delicious and not in need of any additional salt or pepper. 

Step 5: Fill the Tomatoes

I like to pack as much of this tasty filling in as possible. Set the tomatoes in a casserole dish. I don’t recommend a cookie sheet as some tomatoes may leak juices that you won’t want dripping to the bottom of your oven. Pop those tomato hats back on and into the oven they go. Cook until they are a little blistered, tender, and juicy. 

Serve immediately and enjoy! I find these stuffed tomatoes taste best just after cooking. They can be reheated, but the flavor is not as nice.