How to boost protein in meals is one of the most frequent requests from the women here / clients, without feeling like you miss other valuable ingredients/nutrients/flavours i.e fibre, carbohydrate.
Tip: prep quinoa, boiled eggs and chickpeas at the start of the week to set you up for a few days.
This is a great example of how you can increase your protein in a meal using ingredients you can easily keep on hand.
1. Start with 1/2-3/4 cup cooked quinoa.
1/2 cup cooked quinoa = 4g protein
3/4 cup cooked quinoa = 6g protein
2. Add 1/3 cup cottage cheese
1/3 cup cottage cheese = 9g protein
3. Add 3/4 – 1 cup cooked chickpeas, mixed with some bangin flavours like Mexican spices, toasted corn, tomato, red capsicum, herbs chilli etc. Full recipe for these on brownpapernutrition.com (Mexican Chickpea Flatbreads + Avocado Crema *one*)
3/4 cup cooked chickpeas = 7.5-8g protein
1 cup cooked chickpeas = 10-11g protein
4. Pop your egg on top, add 2 if you wish
1 egg = 6g protein
2 eggs = 12g protein
5. Enjoy healthy fats such as avocado
6. BONUS POINTS for some fermented or pickled veggies in there – as you may realise I’m proper obsessed by pickled red cabbage and red onion right now – so good, and so much easier to digest than raw. Of course salt pepper herbs and chilli flakes to finish!
So you can potentially hit +35g protein if you’re aiming on the upper end of the ingredients here but a minimum 27g protein in a meal like this even if you aren’t that hungry and go for the lower end of the ingredient quantities.
This is far richer in protein than the 1 egg I’ll often see added to a salad without grains or legumes in a dietary review.
