Quinoa Flour

One US cup of quinoa flour weighs 112 grams (4 ounces). Going the other way, 100 grams is about 0.89 cups.

Also called ground quinoa, quinoa powder, whole grain quinoa flour, organic quinoa flour.

A cup of quinoa flour weighs 112 g (4 oz). Bob's Red Mill weighs a spooned and levelled cup at 112 g and King Arthur gives 110 g, 2% apart, so this entry publishes Bob's Red Mill's figure and King Arthur's agrees.

Quinoa flour is whole quinoa seed milled to a fine, pale powder. Quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa) is an Andean seed related to spinach and beets, a pseudocereal rather than a grain, and the flour is gluten-free. USDA's Foundation Foods analysis of quinoa flour (FDC 2512372) gives 11.9% protein and 6.6% fat, several times the fat of white wheat flour. That oil gives the flour a grassy, slightly bitter taste and makes it go stale faster, and it also makes the powder a little cohesive, so it clumps in the bag.

Bob's Red Mill's flour weight chart lists its organic quinoa flour at 28 g per quarter cup and 112 g per cup, measured by the spoon-and-level method, and the bag's label prints the same 28 g quarter cup. King Arthur gives 1 cup at 3 7/8 oz, 110 g, and its figure is accepted.

One caution on Bob's Red Mill. Its chart gives the same 28 g quarter cup for almond flour and hazelnut flour, and 28 g is one ounce, the weight a label serving often rounds to. On its own, Bob's row could be that convention rather than a weighed cup. King Arthur's 110 g, measured independently, is what makes the figure solid.

Other labels do not agree and are not used. An older Ancient Harvest label printed 1/4 cup as 34 g (136 g per cup) and a Shiloh Farms label 1/4 cup as 40 g (160 g per cup), both known only from label transcriptions on nutrition sites and no longer on the brands' own pages. An Eden listing gives 30 g, which is the regulatory reference amount for flours rather than a measurement. A cup at 160 g would be heavier than spooned all-purpose flour, which a fine, oily whole-grain powder is not.

The physical check: the solid particles of a grain flour are about 1.4 times as dense as water, so 112 g in a spooned cup means the flour fills about a third of it, the rest air, typical of fine flours. Whole wheat flour weighs 120 g per cup on this site and buckwheat flour 120 g; quinoa flour's slightly lighter cup fits a finer, more cohesive powder that bridges and holds air when spooned. Whole quinoa seed weighs 170 g per cup, so milling makes the cup about a third lighter.

Practical guidance: use 112 g per cup, 56 g per half cup, 28 g per quarter cup and about 7 g per tablespoon. Spoon the flour into the cup and level it without tapping; whisk it first if it has clumped. In gluten-free baking quinoa flour is usually one part of a blend, so weigh each flour rather than measuring by the cup, and store the bag in the fridge or freezer to keep the oil fresh.