You probably already know much of the good news about whole grains:
Because of all the digestible and indigestible fiber in whole grains, you feel full and content—and are thus encouraged to eat less. All that fiber exits your stomach at a crawl, about four calories per minute. You not only feel sated more quickly; you also feel sated longer. By contrast, sugars leave your stomach at a gallop, about ten calories per minute. That’s why a mid-afternoon snack of a bowl of pudding will leave you rummaging again in the pantry for another snack even before you start dinner.
A Wake Forest University analysis of seven studies encompassing 285,000 people found that those who ate 2½ servings of whole grains a day reduced their risk of coronary disease by almost a quarter. And what’s a serving? Not much. Any one of the following counts as one: a slice of whole-grain bread, about 3⁄4 cup of whole-grain cereal, ½ cup of whole wheat pasta, or as little as ¼ cup of cooked whole grains themselves. A single serving of many of the recipes in this book will set you up for the day.
Because whole grains exit the stomach slowly and require increased digestive activity, they morph into glucose (a.k.a. brain and muscle food) at a fairly slow rate—and so they give you a long, slow energy burn, not a short, aggressive insulin spike.
And there’s still much more! A study published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 2011 found that those who ate a whole-grain cereal in the mornings significantly reduced their risk of hypertension. Whole grains can help lower blood cholesterol levels. They’ve been shown to fight gum disease. And some of the compounds in some whole grains—lignans and oligosaccharides—function as “prebiotics,” stimulating the growth of good flora in your gut.
Suffice it to say, whole grains are a veritable medicine cabinet on the plate. But believe it or not, there are more reasons why whole grains are nature’s wonders. And these are the ones that interest us the most: the culinary reasons. For us—two cookbook writers with 21 titles under our belts in 12 years, not counting the ones ghostwritten for celebrities, and not counting the countless articles and columns we’ve written for most of the food and health magazines—these reasons may well be the most compelling:
We have a good friend who once said, “I’d be a vegetarian if I knew how to cook.” When pressed to explain, she mumbled something about boiling a pot of quinoa and getting stuck with it all week. She’s not alone. Many of us think cooking a whole grain is nothing more than dumping it in a cauldron and then looking at a forlorn bit of beige in the colander later.
In fact, whole grains are up to the challenge of a world of cheffy techniques and preparations, stir-fries to braises, soups to salads, roasted this to fried that, vegetarian, vegan, or neither. Because of a complex interaction of carbohydrates, they absorb some flavors with nary a change and enhance others by suppressing bitter notes; they provide backtaste notes for blander ingredients and bring out the sweet or sour notes in more commanding ones.
We love pork. And beef. And chicken. And rotisseried baby goat. But we’ll also confess that there’s a fairly small range among protein flavors. No, lamb doesn’t taste like goat; however, there’s a small continuum of flavors among various cuts from various animals. Of course smoked pork doesn’t taste like wine-braised beef; but as you homogenize and standardize the cooking techniques among various cuts, you reduce the flavor range even more. For example, a broiled pork chop and a broiled flank steak can taste within spitting distance of each other. Sad to say, the taste of lobster isn’t that far from that of shrimp. Nor halibut from bass. Yes, subtly different—but on a small continuum.
Not whole grains! The range of textures and flavors is astounding: from the subtle sweetness of amaranth to the in-your-face sour/savory slapdash of spelt berries; from the soft, gentle luxury of teff to the molar-satisfying dankness of hull-less barley; from the nutty earthiness of red rice to the slightly musky, grassy give of brown. Whole grains can hit four of the five flavor nodes without a problem: sweet, sour, bitter, and umami. You can add your own salt.
For us two food writers, this is the big one. Let the backyard boys have their whole pigs in pits. It’s been done. Many times. But not black barley. Or Job’s tears. Or rye berries. Maybe as side dishes, but rarely as the center of the plate.
You want to pump up your foodie creds? An entire category is hiding in plain sight, right on the shelves of the corner supermarket. You don’t need to dig a pit—or go all the way around the world to discover some esoteric ingredient. Whole grains have been here all along, even if some of us have passed them by on our way to the smoked jowls and organic fennel. We should stop and consider the creaminess of whole-grain farro, the spike of triticale, the snap of rye berries.
A brown rice casserole will put you back a few bucks; a standing rib roast, a chunk of your IRA. And when you buy an affordable bag of millet or buckwheat, you’re also stocking up for satisfying meals for the future, not just for tonight.
They’re “founder crops,” some of the first things we learned to cultivate back in the shadows of history. By relishing whole grains, we connect ourselves to our past in a deep and fundamental way. Whole grains led our ancestors to settle in large groups—and thus gave us what we now call “civilization” and even “culture.” We grouped together to be near the grain stores; we became social (not just familial) creatures; we began doing things for larger and larger gathered groups—a.k.a. audiences. Voila, Mozart and Monet.
Given all that, why aren’t most of us eating more whole grains?
Yes, there’s the 6:15-on-a-Wednesday-night factor. Some whole grains take time to cook, something few of us have in ready supply. But we’ve developed some ways around that problem, as you’ll see. You can make cold salads on a Sunday afternoon when you have more free time, then enjoy them for days: lunch at your desk or a quick dinner when you’re back home. What’s more, if you do some simple batch-cooking on the weekends, whipping up a bowl of wheat berries or a pot of barley for the fridge, you can have several whole-grain hot meals in the days ahead as you dip into your storehouse, adding grains to soups or casseroles.
We’ll also admit that some whole grains are rather esoteric, more aspirational than inspirational. Triticale berries, anyone? But a cook’s reach should exceed his grasp. Or hers. With apologies to Robert Browning.
But what else keeps us from eating whole grains? We suspect they’re too often shellacked with all those nutritional (and digestive) claims. Sure, it’s hard to talk about whole grains without bringing up the power pack of vitamins and fiber that they are.
But let’s. In fact, let’s never mention your colon again. From here on out, let’s think about whole grains from a culinary standpoint, not a nutritional one. Let’s assume their pharmacopeia status—and move on.
What’s more, whole grains are too often forgotten because of where they’re found in the modern grocery store—that is, the middle aisles. Many of us have swallowed whole that foodie canard about “shopping the perimeter of the supermarket to find real food.” In turn, we’ve missed the red rice, amaranth, barley, buckwheat, and even rye berries.
With whole grains, you can burnish your culinary creds and explore a wide-open category you may have passed by; you can find a new way to think about dinner while also crafting salads for lunch in the days ahead and set-you-up-right breakfasts for the weekends. You can embrace the widest range of flavors in the supermarket and the roots of human civilization. All without thinking about your colon. Seems like a win/win to us.
Whole is deceptive. To figure out why, we need to look more closely at the seeds we call grains. Most have four components:
So here’s the quibble, the deceptive part: Almost no whole grain that you buy is whole. Very few recipes in this book—or in any whole-grain book—call for grains straight out of the field. Most are not yet edible, some are edible in only very small quantities unless you’re willing to brave a stomachache, and a few sport grossly bitter chemicals that protect the seeds from anyone who (or anything that) wants to eat them.
More confusing still, white rice and pearled barley are sometimes pointed to as “processed grains,” as if “whole grains” themselves are somehow unprocessed. True, brown rice and hull-less barley are not as processed as white rice and pearled barley; but they, like almost all whole grains, are indeed processed—in two, three, or even four steps:
Without their tooth-cracking hulls, most whole grains are not whole, per se. In truth, we should call them culinary whole grains. Or perhaps as-whole-as-is-feasible grains. But perhaps we’re lazy.
You’ll also note we keep using qualifying words like “almost all” in this discussion. That’s because there are culinary whole grains that are not botanical grains: buckwheat and quinoa, for example. These have a slightly different structure, although they get lumped with other whole grains in the kitchen because of their epicurean similarities.
And there’s one whole grain we can eat raw right out of the field, with almost no processing, or with minimal cooking, and almost always with the hull intact: sweet corn.
In the end, most of the culinary whole grains we’ll work with in this book still have three of their four components: the bran, germ, and endosperm. By definition, we’ve just excluded all white rice, almost all couscous, and most of the farro sold in our supermarkets (both perlato and semi-perlato farro—more on this in a bit). However, we have not knocked out certain whole-grain flakes (grains that have been steamed and rolled but left with those three essential parts intact): barley flakes, rolled oats, or wheat flakes, for example. Nor have we kicked whole-grain polenta or grits to the curb.
In fact, the key difference for us is the one between a processed grain and a refined one. In modern agriculture, the processing can go well beyond our three or four steps. The bran or the germ can also be removed. Most of the time, both are.
Because of the abundance of polyunsaturated fats in the germ, grains go rancid in long storage. And because of the abundance of fiber in the bran, grains do require more chewing. To fit our speedier, apparently toothless world, a refined grain is stripped down just to the sweet endosperm—a lovely treat, no doubt; but a long way from the dynamic flavor continuum of its whole-grain incarnation. Pearled barley, white rice, all-purpose flour, most cornmeal, white rice flour, perlato farro—these are your endosperms done up as pantry staples.
We’ll never turn down a layer cake made with all-purpose flour. But that’s not our purpose in this book. Not a one of these recipes even centers on grain flours: whole wheat flour, quinoa flour, and the like. While some of the recipes call for those, they also include a whole grain of some sort. And there’s not a grain “sneak” in the mix, barley buried in brownies. As you can see, we’re serious about whole grains. More so than you might think. We want to take them off the side of the plate and move them to the center.
With the rampant rise of celiac disease in Western countries, as well as burgeoning gluten allergies around us, some shills have rushed into the breach to offer whole grains as the answer.
The truth is far more nuanced. Without a doubt, four whole grains contain glutens, sometimes in ample supply: barley, rye, triticale, and wheat in all its forms, from wheat berries to Kamut® to farro. And yes, even spelt, which is a type of wheat. It’s not gluten-free.
Other whole grains are void of glutens: amaranth, buckwheat, corn, millet, quinoa, rice, sorghum, teff, and wild rice.
Oats are not in either list. While they do not appear to contain glutens—more research is needed—they are often contaminated with glutens because 1) oats are grown near gluten-rich crops and pick up some of the dust, particularly during harvest, or 2) oats are often processed in a plant that also processes gluten-rich grains, thereby offering them the chance to pick up even more of said dust. With those caveats in tow, some celiac support groups say oats may be a gluten-free but only if they are consumed in small quantities and purchased from a manufacturer that guarantees a gluten-free production line. Oat groats—the whole grain itself, not steamed and flattened—may have a lower level of cross-contamination than rolled oats, but the evidence is spotty and too often anecdotal.
In fact, given the predominance of wheat throughout North American grain processing facilities, gluten cross-contamination remains a distinct possibility with many other whole grains. Don’t fear; be informed. Consult the individual manufacturers. Some are incredibly forthcoming with studies and certifications. But also consult your personal physician as well as a reliable celiac organization. The more you know, the better you’ll eat.
The most important thing you need to know is that this is a book of main courses. There’s not a side dish here. Even the gratin has been pumped up to make it center-of-the-table fare.
Since whole grains are not only nutritional wonders but also culinary ones, and since they are indeed the gourmet ingredient hiding in plain sight, we want to make them the focus of the meal, not an afterthought with a pat of butter. In other words, we want them at the center of the plate. Which means we want to explore and—yes—play around with whole grains as the very ballast of a dish, the way chicken breasts might be in a skillet sauté. In all that follows, a whole grain is the heart of a recipe’s flavors, the fulcrum on which the others balance.
That all said, this is not a vegetarian book. We’ve scattered lots of meat around—although we should also tell you plenty of the recipes swing vegetarian or vegan (or can be so swung with slight emendations). And any meat used is often a “flavoring agent” for the grains themselves.
The recipes are cast in three chapters: Early, Cold, and Warm. That is, 1) breakfast fare, 2) salads and such that can be made ahead, and 3) hot meals, best for supper or even dinner parties, barley burgers to quinoa crepes, soups to casseroles. Within each chapter, the recipes are collected in like-minded groups: In the breakfast chapter, for example, there are cereals in one section and weekend fare in another.
The recipes themselves have distinct components. At the start of each, you’ll always find these:
Serves. A rough approximation of how many servings the recipe yields. We’re two middle-aged foodies; we can polish off a bowl of salad more quickly than our parents but can’t compete with our nieces and nephews.
Active time. The time you’ll spend actually doing the work of the recipe: chopping an onion, filling a pot, and grilling the fish.
Total time. The start-to-finish time the recipe takes, including all the times you’re lolling about: when the grains are soaking, when the casserole is baking.
The recipe may also include one or more of these:
Make ahead. Tips for how to store the dish for later or how to cook it partially one day and finish it another.
Save time. By and large, how to make the recipe if you already have that pot of cooked wheat berries or quinoa or what have you in the fridge: what steps to skip and how much of the cooked grain to add at the right moment.
Vegetarian/Vegan/Make It Vegetarian/Make It Vegan. A marker for a recipe that fits one of those parameters, always found in the upper left or right corner of the page. To clarify, vegetarian means that the recipe has no direct animal products (like meat) but does have ingredients that may have come from a living animal (like milk, butter, cheese, yogurt, eggs, or honey). We have not used vegetarian to mean pescatarian (that is, someone who doesn’t eat land animals but does eat fish and shellfish). Therefore, a standard bottling of Worcestershire sauce kicks a recipe out of the vegetarian category because of the sauce’s reliance on anchovies. Vegan is the strictest term of all, connoting a recipe in which there are no animal products whatsoever, including honey or milk. (Note that the vegan designation pertains only to the recipe itself, not to whatever else is offered as serving suggestions in the notes.)
If the recipe lends itself to an easy vegetarian or vegan conversion without destroying its flavor profile, we’ve given you a way to do that.
To the side of the recipe itself, you’ll also find one or more tips like these:
Testers’ Notes. Tips or tricks that we discovered in making the recipe or that our testers discovered in remaking it. You’ll also find some serving suggestions here, as well as information about less-familiar ingredients.
Grain Swaps. Suggestions for other grains that will work with this flavor profile.
Chef It Up! Ways to go whole hog. In truth, there are two of us working on this book. Bruce the chef always tries to push the boundaries of flavors and textures; he loves to fiddle with whatever he’s found on his latest shopping trip, even his online shopping excursions. Mark the writer struggles to pare it all back to make it more accessible. Many of these tips are then the ways the recipe was first tested—or further turns Bruce wanted to make in the concept while Mark applied the brakes. They’ll no doubt make a more interesting dish; they may also send you on a more extensive shopping trip, probably some of it online for esoteric spices and such.
Make It Easier! Ways to streamline or simplify the recipe. For example, our granola calls for three kinds of whole-grain flakes, but it could also be made with a selection of two. Or a recipe might call for cutting the kernels off ears of corn but we’ll give you the equivalent amount of frozen corn kernels to use instead.
Getting whole grains from the box to the table often involves two if not three steps. All involve water—or on rarer occasions, some other liquid like vegetable broth. The cooking process can be divided into three steps. To wit:
Believe it or not, it’s not necessary to rinse whole grains before cooking them. Yes, many cookbooks, particularly older ones, are nuts for this step. Even newer ones proffer this advice, mostly because recipe-testing has yet to catch up with modern production.
Even a decade ago, grains were often left with saponins or other bitter elements on the bran. Quinoa was particularly notorious, but even some varietals of spelt could knock you out. What’s more, shipping methods for some grains like rice included coating them in talc to absorb rot-inducing moisture in a ship’s hold. Finally, whole grains were often only found in bulk at health-food stores—and heaven knows where hands had been before they reached into those bins.
These days, rinsing has become essentially unnecessary. You needn’t worry too much about residual, bitter compounds. Reputable, large producers thoroughly wash quinoa and other grains before packaging them. If you’re buying from some small producer online, ask questions—or rinse away to be safe. Otherwise, you’re good to go. These days, talc-coated rice is illegal in almost all developed countries (although you can sometimes find bags of it in discount Chinese supermarkets). And bad stuff from dirty hands will not be cured by water, but maybe by the heat of cooking. Besides, you should be spending your hard-earned money at a market with better sanitary practices.
However, there is still the matter of rinsing and aesthetics. Some cooks insist on rinsing long-grain rice to wash off excess starch so the grains stay separate after cooking. But this is not even an issue with long-grain brown, red, or black rice since the bran coating keeps the starch tucked inside the grains.
That said, there are times when rinsing is advisable—particularly if you’re lucky enough to buy whole grains directly from a farmer selling them at a roadside stand or from his online store. In this case, bitter compounds may be present; pesticides may be an issue. Also, certain grain producers package “minimally processed” grains. A rinse can’t hurt any of these.
Whether you rinse or not, you still can’t turn off the tap. Whole grains are dried for long storage and economic convenience. Along the way, they may have lost copious amounts of moisture, often more than half their weight. So you may need to soak them before they hit the heat.
Soaking gives the grains a head start on the water uptake in the pot. Heat and water both work to tenderize the grains, but they don’t work at the same rate. Heat actually works more quickly and more relentlessly, breaking apart the exterior cells before the inner ones have tenderized, causing inner cells to rupture before they’ve plumped, and eventually compromising the prized texture (although not much of the flavor). By rehydrating grains, you give the water a leg up on the tyranny of the heat: If you get the innards doped with moisture before the coating has broken apart, you end up with more even cooking—and therefore better texture, more chew without mushy bits.
So to soak or not to soak? We’ve got a few general guidelines. We’ll detail specific cases in the recipes themselves. Some of those suggestions may also contradict these guidelines, for reasons we’ll explain on a case-by-case basis. Be that as it may, here’s what we suggest:
Don’t cook whole grains in their soaking water. It contains released, dissolved starches and sugars that can affect the grains’ texture. If they’re not certified organic grains, they may have also leached pesticide residue and such into the water. After their initial soaking on the counter, drain the grains in a colander set in the sink, then fill a saucepan with fresh water before bringing it to a boil over high heat.
And don’t cook them in a roiling cauldron over high heat. Instead, once you bring the water up to a boil and add the grains, drop the heat under the pot to low for a gentler bubble, more like a good simmer. This is especially important during the final 10 minutes of cooking to ensure that the grains do not bash each other into mush.
Although whole grains are cooked in water most of the time, they can also be simmered in broth of any stripe, chicken to vegetable. But steer clear of acidic liquids like wine or most fruit juices. Because of complex chemical interactions, the grains will end up squishy rather than tender.
There are two basic methods to cooking whole grains on the stovetop:
The Asian Method. You try to predict the exact amount of water needed for the amount of grain at hand, simmering both together, most often covered, until the water has been fully absorbed. This is how most of us in North America cook rice. We end up with tender, fluffy grains, no draining necessary. The grains also benefit by sitting off the heat, covered, for 10 minutes after the water has been absorbed so they can steam and plump before serving.
The East Indian Method. You swamp the grains with lots of water in a big saucepan, bring it to a boil, and get them tender at a good simmer without necessarily covering the pan; then you pour off the excess liquid by dumping the contents of the saucepan into a colander set in the sink. Note the two most important words in that explanation of the method: “swamp” and “big.” You want lots of water in a large saucepan. Even if you’re cooking only a cup or so of grains, they need room to dance over the heat. Otherwise, they’ll clump at the bottom of the pan and cook unevenly—or worse yet, burn. If you give them enough water and enough room, there’s no need to stir at all: Just set the pot to simmering, reduce the heat, and turn the timer on. Many East Indian cooks even make rice this way. In general, this method leads to chewy, dense, hearty grains.
In terms of knowing when the grains are ready, there’s only one real solution: taste. Pull a grain out with a spoon, blow on it to cool it down, and test its tenderness. Sure, set the timer to give you a general hint of the amount of time you’ll need to cook the grains over the heat. But the proof is in the pudding. Or the grains, as it were.
Because nothing is ever as quite as simple as it seems, we do have three “howevers” to our two methods:
Particularly with the East Indian method, the excess cooking water must be removed—that is, drained off. Even with the Asian method, the grains are sometimes done before the water has been fully absorbed; so it, too, must be poured off to prevent a squishy texture as the grains sit waiting for you to get dinner on the table.
It’s not as easy as it sounds. Some grains are tiny. Teff, millet, and even quinoa can slip through the holes of a standard colander. The best solution? Invest in a fine-mesh sieve, preferably a conical one, sometimes called a chinoise (French, cheen-WAHZ), a throwback to a less-PC time when its shape was said to resemble a Chinese hat.
That said, you can make do with a standard colander by lining it with cheesecloth or paper towels to keep smaller grains inside. Too many layers and the water will not drain off quickly enough and you can overflow the colander; too few, and the paper can collapse or tear, the grains then down the drain. Better to invest in the right tool.
We will not be working with all the whole grains in the world. Instead, our focus is on those grains readily available in supermarkets or from online suppliers. So no einkorn or mesquite pods for us. But yes, some of these whole grains are indeed readily available but still unknown to some of us, like rye berries and Kamut. You can find these in almost any large supermarket—and because whole grains are made for storage and shipping, a quick online shopping trip will always do the trick.
And one more thing: There’s no popcorn in this book, perhaps a glaring omission. But we couldn’t figure out how to make popcorn into a main course, other than a bowlful with half a stick of melted butter and bottle of soda to soothe a bad breakup. We assume you can take care of that recipe on your own.
So let’s take a look at the whole grains you’re going to encounter—their distinct flavors and textures, information about their various cooking techniques, as well as some history and culinary trivia. You’ll also find a list of recipes from the book that use each of the stated grains (not as a “swap” or substitution but as the grain called for in the recipe itself).
Although more than 60 varieties are cultivated worldwide, in North America you’ll find either beige (very common) or black (very rare) amaranth.
Flavor: Earthy, grassy, even woody, and vaguely herbal. It stands up to hot chiles and acidic tomatoes beautifully, as well as to maple syrup and warming, winterish spices like cinnamon and nutmeg. Black amaranth has a more bitter taste than the standard beige grains.
Texture: Porridgelike, slippery, silky, even gummy. The grains release lots of starch to create a velvety mush with individual crunchy bits in the mix. If you look closely, you’ll see the germ haloed around the tiny endosperm of each grain.
Historically: Amaranth is equal to corn as a fundamental crop of the precolonial Americas. The Aztecs used it in small cakes during religious ceremonies. After colonization, the Spanish banned its cultivation because of the resemblance of those cakes to the wafers used in the Mass—and the grain went “underground,” cultivated in home plots rather than large farms for the next several centuries. Today, most of the world’s commercial production takes place in the United States; most of what is grown in Asia, South America, and Africa is still a subsistence crop for individual families.
Presoak: No.
Preferred cooking method: Asian in a 1 part grain to 1½ parts water ratio for 15 to 20 minutes. A 1 part grain to 2½ parts water ratio will give a thicker porridge.
Yield: 1 cup raw = 2½ cups cooked.
Also: Amaranth is not truly a cereal grain but the seed of a plant in the goosefoot family, related to spinach and chard. It’s lumped in with other whole grains because of its similar culinary and nutritional profile.
Recipes that call for amaranth:
PERIMETER, CLOCKWISE FROM BOTTOM LEFT: soft white wheat berries, hard red wheat berries, Kamut, spelt berries, whole-grain bulgur, and whole-grain wheat flakes.
CENTER: Kamut flakes
Most of the barley sold in supermarkets is “pearled”—that is, the bran has been scored or even partially removed so the grains cook more quickly. As such, pearled barley is not a whole grain and does not fit the confines of this book. Instead, search out hull-less barley, a modern hybrid with hulls that simply fall off at harvest.
Flavor: Sweet, slightly musky, with earthy and mildly tannic notes.
Texture: Dank and chewy, sort of the grain equivalent to dates, and thus quite a sophisticated gnaw, a great balance to crunchy vegetables in a salad.
Historically: The oldest barley stores have been found in Egypt dating from 6000 BCE. Barley was carried east on ancient trade routes until it was cultivated in China around 2800 BCE. It first spread to North America, thanks to Dutch and British colonists, not as a food source, but for beer production.
Presoak: Yes for hull-less and black barley; no for barley flakes and grits.
Preferred cooking method: East Indian for 50 minutes to 1 hour, depending on the grains’ residual moisture content from long storage.
Yield: 1 cup raw = 22⁄3 cups cooked.
Also: Recent analysis for minerals and nutrients in the bone fragments of Roman gladiators has concluded that most were vegetarians who ate a diet almost exclusively of barley and beans.
Black barley is a varietal with a deep-purple bran, a gorgeous luxury with a more pronounced flavor and slightly less sticky texture.
Several recipes also call for barley grits (sliced whole-grain barley) or barley flakes (rolled barley, liked rolled oats). Check the package labeling to make sure you’ve got a brand that’s truly a whole grain. Note particularly the fiber content—it should be high.
One recipe even calls for whole-grain barley couscous, a Moroccan specialty that is available at Middle Eastern markets or from online suppliers. Barley couscous is in fact an authentic couscous from North Africa and makes a particularly savory, sophisticated main course with sour and umami hints from the grain itself.
Recipes that call for barley (hull-less barley, black barley, barley flakes, or barley grits):
Once the hulls have been removed, buckwheat kernels are called groats—from a Dutch word meaning “a thick penny,” as opposed to a thin, worthless one. Buckwheat groats are small pyramids with one darkened point and an overall beige color with a pale green tint.
Flavor: If toasted (and thus called kasha), a bitter, pugnacious kick that has unfortunately put many a child off buckwheat for life; if untoasted, milder and grassier, with honey and floral notes, and a very subtle, sour accent.
Texture: Moist and toothsome, with a slight give in each groat.
Historically: Although buckwheat is probably indigenous to northern Asia, even Siberia, it has long thrived in cold, harsh climates like northern Europe and northern Asia. It’s often refined into flour for the likes of pancakes on this continent and soba noodles in Japan. It was brought to North America by German and Dutch settlers and now grows wild through much of the continent.
Presoak: No.
Preferred cooking method: East Indian for 10 to 15 minutes. But because buckwheat soaks up water like a sponge, make sure you use at least twice the water to buckwheat by volume in the pan. That said, you’ll find a wide variety of cooking techniques in this book for buckwheat—including toasting the groats before cooking and then coating them in egg.
Yield: 1 cup raw = 2¼ cups cooked.
Also: Another pseudograin like amaranth, buckwheat is actually the seed of a plant related to rhubarb. Because of its sticky texture and relatively quick cooking time, untoasted buckwheat groats can be tossed into stews to thicken them slightly—or added to soups and stews in the slow cooker to give them a little more body.
Recipes that call for buckwheat groats:
Sweet corn on the cob is the quintessence of summer in North America. But corn’s astounding taste and texture can be preserved via freezing—which means it’s available as a culinary staple year round. Although almost all of the recipes in this book call for “sweet corn,” there are many other varieties, most grown solely for feed or industrial purposes.
Flavor: Sugary sweet, mild, with honey overtones.
Texture: Soft and luxurious. Terrific raw, corn needs minimal cooking—but can in fact stand up to long simmers in soups and stews, thanks largely to the grains’ tough but edible hull.
Historically: The colonial Spanish saw corn crops in North America, mistook them for sorghum (which they grew as food for pigs back in Europe), and bypassed the grain entirely. The starving, winter-weary English settlers were the first Europeans to recognize that the Native Americans weren’t throwing their corn crops to the animals but were instead cooking and eating the grain.
Presoak: No.
Preferred cooking method: Since corn is edible raw, any cooking should be minimal—at best. Roast, broil, or grill ears with the kernels intact—or cook corn by stirring it into a pot of boiling water, covering, and setting aside off the heat for no more than 10 minutes.
Yield: 2 large ears of corn yields about 1 cup raw corn kernels, which in turn yields about 1 heaping cup boiled corn kernels or a scant 1 cup roasted or grilled corn kernels.
Also: Several recipes call for whole-grain cornmeal or coarse, whole-grain polenta. In all cases, make sure you have the whole-grain version in hand. Read the labels or check the manufacturer’s websites for more information. If you need whole-grain corn grits and only have whole-grain polenta on hand, grind it in a food processor fitted with the chopping blade to a coarse meal.
One recipe calls for posole (a.k.a. hominy)—kernels of field or flint corn from which the tough hulls may have been removed by cooking them in an alkali; the dried kernels must then be dealt with in a long, complicated process. Some manufacturers make posole (or hominy) by using lye as their alkali, a none-too-savory process. If you’re going to the trouble to make real posole at home, look for a brand that is merely dried field corn without any chemical fandango. Anson Mills dries field corn on the cobs, then cribs it for further dehydration—and leaves you with the perfect stuff for a pot of posole.
Recipes that call for corn (or whole-grain polenta or whole-grain cornmeal):
FROM LEFT: whole-grain polenta, whole-grain cornmeal, posole, and fresh corn
Called hato mugi (
) in Japanese (which translates as “beauty pearls”—for their ostensible ability to clear the complexion), these hard, puffy, teardrop grains are a favorite in Asian kitchens but are just starting to make an appearance in this country, found mostly at high-end markets and health food stores. Job’s tears are sometimes refined, in which case the grains are about the color of uncooked barley. The unrefined grains are dark red and hard as little pebbles. Search for yuuki hato mugi—that is dark hato mugi—for the most intact bran.
Flavor: Dry, nutty, sort of like a dry chestnut or a savory black-eyed pea.
Texture: Grainy, coarse, dry, but also tender. Job’s tears need lots of moisture from surrounding ingredients.
Historically: They have been ground into medicinal teas and floury powders for centuries across Asia. Many Chinese markets sell Job’s tears mislabeled as “wild barley” or “Chinese barley.”
Presoak: No.
Preferred cooking method: East Indian for somewhere between 1 hour and 1 hour 15 minutes, depending on how dry they got as they sat on the shelf. Dark hato mugi can take up to 1 hour 30 minutes to get tender.
Yield: 1 cup raw = 3 cups cooked.
Also: Most of the Job’s tears grown in the world go into jewelry production. They are often the lacquered beads of a rosary.
Recipes that call for Job’s tears:
Presoaking whole grains is often a hindrance to their wider acceptance in the kitchen. “Must I start this recipe the day before?” some might ask. We’ve already discussed the pros and cons of presoaking—and that it doesn’t have to be an overnight event. But in any case, fear not: These recipes require no presoaking at all.
Millet is one of the tiniest whole grains—but packs one of the most distinct flavors, very sophisticated, in fact elegant. Because so much of the millet grown in this country goes into birdseed blends, we have a hunch the grain’s gotten a bad rap by association—which is really too bad, given how nutritious and flavorful it is. But we do have one caveat: Check the expiration date on the package. Millet can go rancid quite quickly. Best to try to smell inside the package, if possible.
Flavor: Savory, like an earthy version of corn with more grassy notes and white wine overtones.
Texture: Crunchy pops and a dense, dry chew if cooked in a low-liquid environment; thick and gooey if swamped in water as it cooks.
Historically: Most likely the original staple crop of China. The oldest known noodles found in Chinese archeological digs were made from millet flour.
Presoak: No.
Preferred cooking method: Asian in a 1 part millet to 2 parts water ratio for the drier version; 1 part millet to 3 parts water for a more porridgelike consistency—in either case, for 18 to 20 minutes.
Yield: 1 cup raw = 21⁄3 cups cooked.
Also: Pliny the Elder attributes the fierce fury of the Mongol hordes to a porridge of millet, mare’s milk, and horse blood. No, thanks. We’ll stick with millet burgers.
Recipes that call for millet (or millet grits):
Although most of us know oats as a rolled grain eaten at breakfast, many of the recipes here use the groats—that is, the grain still intact without its hull. Yes, standard rolled oats are also whole grains; but they’ve been steamed and flattened for quicker cooking. That processing does knock down the flavor profile a bit. Although we do call for rolled oats in a few recipes, we hope we can encourage you to try the real thing: the oat groats themselves.
Flavor: Sweet and mild with a slightly bitter finish—groats taste like oatmeal squared.
Texture: Very firm with a distinct, chewy give toward the center of each grain.
Historically: Oats are one of the newer grains in human cultivation, although the plants were growing wild in northern Africa and central Russia by 2500 BCE. The Romans first saw the culinary uses and began adding them to the barley-and-bean diet of the gladiators.
Presoak: Yes for the groats.
Preferred cooking method: East Indian for the groats—and for between 45 minutes and 1 hour 15 minutes.
Yield: 1 cup raw = 2 cups cooked.
Also: Oats store a great deal of their fat in the endosperm, rather than the germ; so they go rancid fairly quickly. To alleviate that problem, almost all oats are toasted at harvest, thereby chemically changing the fat into a more neutral component.
Steel-cut oats are simply the groats sliced into small bits. They take a long time to cook because they’re not necessarily steamed and flattened the way rolled oats are.
Recipes that call for oat groats or rolled oats:
There may be no bigger, modern success story for grains than quinoa. Because it has a mild taste and cooks quickly, it’s now a pantry staple and even found in take-out salads at neighborhood supermarkets. The individual seeds sprout little rings as they cook, billions of little Saturns in a bowl. Although white quinoa is the most common varietal in our supermarkets, you can also find red quinoa, originally from the high Andes in modern Bolivia, as well as an intense, gritty hybrid called “black quinoa” that’s been crossed with lamb’s quarters. Be wary: Some versions of red quinoa are not strictly whole grains. Look for packages specifically labeled as “whole grain.”
Flavor: Grassy but mildly so, slightly nutty (more so if first toasted), with a pleasant, earthy overtone, sort of like a light red wine. Red quinoa is drier in texture and black is bigger in flavor.
Texture: A distinct pop with just a faint hint of gumminess, although mostly dry.
Historically: Quinoa was originally a high-altitude plant. It was first cultivated by prehistory Andean tribal groups before these peoples were subsumed into the Incan empire.
Presoak: No.
Preferred cooking method: East Indian for about 12 minutes.
Yield: 1 cup raw = 3½ cups cooked.
Also: Quinoa was first introduced to North America in the 1880s, not as a culinary staple, but as a flowering garden plant by avid plant breeder Luther Burbank.
Quinoa is another pseudograin, closely related to amaranth—and thus also to beets and spinach.
Recipes that call for quinoa:
With wheat, rice has been a dietary grain staple since at least the time of ancient Rome and, along with corn, certainly is so now. Although most of us know the overly sweet, refined white rice that’s a side dish for many a meal, whole-grain brown, red, and black rice bear it no resemblance, especially with their bolder flavors, distinct nuttiness, and more pronounced chew—all of which means they’re better suited for the center of the plate. White rice is a neutral palette; whole-grain rice is a bruiser than needs balancing by other, complex, forceful flavors.
Rice varietals come in three forms: long-, medium-, and short-grain. The differences are, yes, the length of the grains, but more importantly, the ratio of two sticky starches: tough, firm amylose and sticky, soft amylopectin. The less amylose—the grains are “short” in amylose—the stickier the rice. In truth, some medium-grain rice kernels are shorter than many short-grain ones. Long-grain rice is dry, almost flaky; medium, stickier and chewier; short, quite glutinous and moist.
Flavor: Nutty and intense, with a slightly bitter nose and spiky notes of asparagus, turnips, and sweet potatoes. Black rice adds many more sweet accents to the mix.
Texture: Chewy and dense, sometimes very dry (especially red rice), although short-grain brown rice can be quite sticky.
Historically: Although global production has surpassed 200 billion tons a year, rice remains one of the hardest crops on the land. Because rice is grown in water, the land slowly silts, suffocating under repeated harvests. Plus, the methane release from rice crops is astounding, the stalks acting as little drinking straws that allow the decaying muck underwater to bubble the gas into the atmosphere. As we’ll see, there are farmers who are meeting this challenge head-on.
Presoak: No (although you can—see this page).
Preferred cooking method: Asian for this book—although plenty of East Indians, Italians, and Spaniards would disagree. Check the package instructions or the specific recipes for the various ratios and timings among various sorts of brown, red, and black rices.
Yield: 1 cup raw long-grain brown rice = 31⁄3 cups cooked.
1 cup raw medium-grain brown rice = 23⁄4 cups cooked.
1 cup raw short-grain brown rice = 22⁄3 cups cooked.
1 cup raw red rice = 3½ cups cooked.
1 cup raw black rice = 3 cups cooked.
Also: Although black rice is grown across the world—particularly in Southeast Asia where it’s used in a variety of sweet and savory dishes—the only varietals called for in this book are the various Italian ones, often lumped together as venere rice (that is, “from Venus”). This black rice is nutty but very moist, almost damp, with a pronounced sweetness.
Half of the over 20 million tons of rice grown in the United States each year is exported. In fact, China consumes over 150 million tons of rice a year—and needs all the help it can get to meet the demand. Of the rice that remains in the United States, 16 percent goes into beer and liquor production; 10 percent into pet food.
Recipes that call for rice:
FROM TOP: red cargo rice, black Venere rice, medium-grain brown rice
Most of us know rye from the flour used in the slightly fermented bread: a big hit of flavor, often balanced with molasses (in central European traditions) or honey (in Scandinavian ones). However, rye berries themselves are a different culinary animal altogether—and a surprising find for the whole-grain kitchen. The grains themselves can range in color from pale green to pale brown, a hard little seed that offers a surprisingly complex taste.
Flavor: Sweet, with mildly sour marks, vaguely reminiscent of chocolate without any of the bitter notes.
Texture: Very chewy, quite dense, always al dente even after long cooking.
Historically: A European crop, rye was cultivated fairly late in the game, probably first in the early Middle Ages but still not very much until its introduction to England in the 500s CE when it was found to contain ample sugars for distilling.
Presoak: Yes.
Preferred cooking method: East Indian for about 1 hour.
Yield: 1 cup raw = 22⁄3 cups cooked.
Also: In the early 19th century, rye was the most cultivated grain crop in the United States. Blame the new republic’s distilleries.
Recipes that call for rye berries:
Drought-resistant sorghum has long functioned as an African staple, a gorgeously starchy and toothsome addition to stews and curries.
Flavor: Fairly bland, like a duller form of millet with slight, earthy notes and a faint sweetness that nonetheless refuses to be masked, even under lots of chiles.
Texture: Dry and even a little crunchy after long cooking, sort of like red rice, but firmer—and thus often paired with creamy dairy products or added to stews.
Historically: First cultivated in Egypt and other parts of northeastern Africa by 2200 BCE, sorghum became food for slaves in the West Indies where it was known as guinea corn. There was a huge push during the 1930s to get US farmers to grow sorghum because of its drought resistance (the Dust Bowl was winding down) and its high yield (World War II was gearing up). Despite much hoopla, crop plantings fell to almost nil when the war effort ended.
Presoak: Yes.
Preferred cooking method: East Indian for between 45 minutes and 1 hour, even a little longer if the grains are very dry from long storage.
Yield: 1 cup raw = 2 cups cooked.
Also: Until the late 1950s, sorghum was the third most cultivated grain on the planet, behind wheat and rice. It is now grown extensively in China in areas too dry for rice—and is used there in the production of a type of wine.
Sorghum syrup is a delicacy in the American South. However, it is made from the sweet juice of a species related to but separate from our whole-grain plant.
Recipes that call for sorghum:
Botanically, teff is a form of millet. In the kitchen, however, the two are quite different, seemingly unrelated. Teff is available in ivory and brown varietals—which are interchangeable for the purposes of this book, although ivory teff is a bit milder than brown (and much rarer in our supermarkets). If you’ve ever eaten the flatbread called injera in an Ethiopian restaurant, you’ve had teff flour.
Flavor: A sweet/sour balance unmatched in any other grain with slight, savory, even umami notes.
Texture: Wet and moist, with just a slight amount of give, mostly the result of the way teff even absorbs moisture in the mouth as it is chewed.
Historically: Teff is associated almost exclusively with modern Ethiopia, since it’s been grown there since at least 4000 BCE. Ethiopian long-distance runners attribute their amazing stamina to teff.
Presoak: No.
Preferred cooking method: Asian in a 1 part teff to 1½ parts water ratio for distinct, individual grains; or a 1 part teff to 2½ parts water ratio for a richer porridge; or a 1 part teff to 3 parts water ratio for a thick paste. For each, plan on 10 to 15 minutes, as the recipe indicates.
Yield: 1 cup raw = 3 cups cooked.
Also: Teff is a moisture sponge, even more so than millet; baked goods can turn dry and tough overnight. Without larding them up with too much fat to compensate, the only answer is to consume teff dishes when they’re made.
Recipes that call for teff:
Pronounced tri-teh-KAY-lee, this grain is a modern hybrid, first developed in Scotland in 1875, a cross between wheat (Latin, triticum) and rye (Latin, secale). The culinary whole grain is sometimes called “triticale berries.”
Flavor: Grassy, definitely herbal, even a little pungent, with umami notes among the sour overtones.
Texture: Dense and resistant, just what you’d expect from a cross between wheat berries and rye berries.
Historically: The original plants were developed in Scotland by dusting wheat blooms with rye pollen; the subsequent generations, however, proved sterile. A decade later, a German researcher noticed that a few of the seeds were fertile; he did some research to discover that triticale would only reproduce if its chromosomes were doubled. No process was found to make this occur on a consistent basis until the 1930s when the grain plants were inoculated with an alkaloid from crocus plants.
Presoak: Yes.
Preferred cooking method: East Indian for 45 minutes to 1 hour.
Yield: 1 cup raw = 22⁄3 cups cooked.
Also: Triticale made its closest run at fame with the original Star Trek. In the famous episode “The Trouble with Tribbles,” Mr. Spock explains that this grain is part of the ongoing genetic experimentation of food sources: “A high-yield grain, a four-lobed hybrid of wheat and rye…a perennial, also, if I’m not mistaken…ancestry all the way back to 20th century Canada.” Apparently Mr. Spock didn’t know his agricultural history too well.
Recipes that use triticale:
Not every whole grain recipe takes a long time. You can get these gourmet powerhouses on your table in a surprisingly short time with these recipes, every one with a total time of less than 1 hour—and a fairly short active time as well.
By far our largest category, wheat berries offer such a range of tastes and textures—from soft white wheat berries to spelt berries—as to defy simple description. Given this spectrum and the satisfaction you can derive from its meals, wheat berries can be said to form the core of this book. You’ll encounter these:
Historically: Although we think of wheat as a distinctly Western grain, it was actually first cultivated in southwestern Asia around Iran. Wheat was one of the world’s first cultivated crops, if not the first, a staple that went with the goats, the world’s first animal domesticated for human consumption. Even back then, most wheat was ground for flour production.
Presoak: Yes for wheat berries of all stripes, farro, spelt berries, and Kamut; no for whole-grain bulgur and wheat flakes.
Preferred cooking method: East Indian for between 45 minutes to 1 hour, depending on the wheat berry varietal.
Whole-grain, quick-cooking bulgur needs to be doused with boiling water and set aside to soak for 1 hour, until the water has been absorbed. The amount of water used for soaking whole-grain bulgur varies by the final texture that the recipe requires. That is, more water for a softer finish.
Yield: 1 cup raw hard red winter wheat berries = 23⁄4 cups cooked.
1 cup raw soft spring white wheat berries = 22⁄3 cups cooked.
1 cup raw whole-grain farro = 21⁄3 cups cooked.
1 cup raw spelt berries = 22⁄3 cups cooked.
1 cup raw Kamut = 23⁄4 cups cooked.
1 cup raw whole-grain, quick-cooking bulgur = 2½ cups soaked.
Also: Unlike corn, wheat has shown itself resistant to hybridization. Wheat flowers are complete and self-pollinating—think of the trouble the scientists had working with them and rye pollen to create triticale. In general, while various strains are in constant production in the modern world, they are quite closely related to the ancient strains of these grasses.
Recipes that use various kinds of wheat berries (or wheat flakes or whole-grain bulgur):
Like rice, wild rice is indeed the seed of an aquatic grass—but rice and wild rice are only tangentially related in the botanical scheme of things. And because of the way the grains form on the stalks and their physical makeup, wild rice is not truly a cereal grain but actually one of our four pretenders, along with amaranth, buckwheat, and quinoa.
Flavor: Pecan and herbal notes, combined with sweet backtastes, sort of reminiscent of a freshly mowed lawn, or cooked corn without the cloying sweetness.
Texture: Tender and luxurious.
Historically: Wild rice is one of the very few grains indigenous to North America. Until quite recently, it was not a cultivated crop but rather a gathered one from lakes near the Boundary Waters on the US and Canadian border in upper Minnesota. The rice was harvested by hand, sometimes in a two-person, labor-intensive process: One person would direct a canoe into the stalks and the other would bend them into the boat with the use of sticks called “knockers,” tapping the stalks and thereby filling the canoe with the tiny grains as it glided over the lake. The plants were repeatedly harvested over weeks, mature seeds continuing to loosen along the stalks as the season progressed.
Presoak: No.
Preferred cooking method: East Indian for between 30 minutes and 1 hour 15 minutes, depending on the varietal you have in hand. Check the package for more information.
Yield: 1 cup raw = 3½ cups cooked.
Also: These days, there are two forms of wild rice in our supermarkets: the rice that is still hand-gathered from canoes in Minnesota and Wisconsin, and the more prolific crops grown in California and Oregon, which are modified, hybridized, black grains that are of a uniform height and weight to make them easier to harvest with industrial machines. Both sorts can be certified organic. In general, hand-gathered wild rice is more savory than its combine-harvested cousin.
Recipes that call for wild rice: