Chia Seeds - You can eat them!

Popular Use for Chia Seeds
Say "Chia" and most people will start singing the Chia Pet TV ad., "Ch, Ch, Ch, Chia!" The seeds are not thought of as a food, they're seeds for a Chia Pet toy; the gag gift for Secret Santa games and people you don't know very well.

If you have never had the pleasure of receiving a Chia Pet you may not know how you get the seeds to stick on the clay pet and head forms (BTW - I've grown Scoobie Doo and Homer Simpson Chia heads in the past).   When you make a chia pet you soak the tiny black seeds overnight in water.  The seeds swell as they soak up water and the next day the globby seeds are spreadable and readily stick to the clay chia pet forms.

...But You Can Eat Them
What you may also not know is you can eat chia seeds! Nutritionally they're actually very good for you and the absorption effect of chia seeds can be used in cooking to thicken solutions.  They can be used in cases where wheat and gluten ingredients (flours) are used to thicken soups and sauces, and  in crock pot recipes that call for semolina to be added to create thicker sauce (semolina is the milled product of durum wheat).  So chia seeds can be an important aid to a gluten and wheat-free diet. You can add chia seeds to the following;

• To thicken home made chili
• To thicken stews and soups
• As a replacement for semolina in Crock Pot recipes
• As a replacement in recipes that call for the addition of flour at the end to thicken
• To thicken runny home made yogurt and puddings

They need to soak a while, so add to pots early in the cooking cycle and add to runny deserts and leave overnight in the fridge. In both cases they seeds will produce a semolina or frogspawn consistency, if you don't like that texture you can buzz them in a blender to make a smoother solution; in stews I hardly notice them.

Really, You Should Eat Them!
Those little black seeds are incredibly good for you. Chia seeds are the richest plant source of omega-3, in fact they contain more omega-3 than salmon or flax seeds. They are also easier to digest than flax seeds, don't need to be ground up and are more stable than flax seeds.  Little black chia seeds have more antioxidants than blueberries and they contain 9 amino-acids. More detailed information can be found here.

Check out what  Dr Weil  has to say about them!

There are some articles that state they aid with weight loss, however the findings are inconclusive so, at this time, you shouldn't assume they have that property, just eat them because they are good for you; 

• Treat them like ground flax seeds and sprinkle on cereal
• Bake in muffins like you would poppy seeds
• Add to salads and dressing

They're so good for you, you should just have a jar next to the salt and pepper and sprinkle them on everything you eat - just kidding! 

I buy them in bulk here from Nuts Online