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YouTubeWhole grains vs refined grains: I consume Whole Grains with all three parts intact: bran, germ and endosperm. For details, see Whole Grains vs Refined Grains.
Examples of refined grains: I stay away from all of these:
- Semolina ('sooji', 'rawa'). See Are Sooji & Rawa Whole Grains?
- White rice, polished rice, white 'poha', white 'murmura' and so on, which are examples of refined rice.
- White flour made from wheat.
- For grains like barley and millets, we have two versions in the market: hulled vs pearled. Hulled is preferable; pearled versions of these grains are more refined.
Intact vs Broken vs Rolled: All three are considered great choices in Whole Food Plant-Based communities. Let's study oats: Oat groats are 'intact'; steel cut oats are 'broken' and rolled oats are 'rolled'. All three are great choices! What do I avoid? Flours and puffed grains. Why? See Whole Grains Hierarchy for an explanation.
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Intact whole grains: Intact whole grains may be soaked overnight and boiled in the morning. Soaking is helpful; it improves the nutritional profile of whole grains. Soaking also reduces cooking times. However, soaking is not emphasized in Whole Food Plant-Based communities. What do I do? I always soak intact or broken whole grains overnight.
Cooking Whole Grains (PDF) lists time requirements and amount of water required for different grains. Overnight soaking softens the grain, so cooking (boiling) time in the morning reduces.
- Broken grains: Broken grains cook faster than intact whole grains. For example, cracked wheat ('dalia') cooks much faster than wheatberries. Broken grains may also be soaked overnight to reduce cooking times.
- Rolled grains: Rolled grains are even faster to cook! We simply mictowave them for a few minutes in water or plant-based milk. In fact, the fastest way to make a sweet porridge in the morning is with rolled oats.
Can we eat whole grains raw? Yes! Interestingly, we can eat some whole grains Raw, Soaked. We can Sprout Them!. We can also Cook Them!
A great video that explains multiple ways of preparing whole grains for sweet porridge.
Which whole grains to buy? Any whole grain that is easily available in the market near us. Every region of the world has its own unique set of locally grown whole grains sold in the market. In USA, we literally have dozens of options, thanks to Amazon and companies like Azure Organics. I encourage my friends to keep experimenting with all sorts of whole grains to help us discover which ones we really like for our sweet porridge! My personal favorites are amaranth, teff, oats, kaniwa, spelt, quinoa, …
- Pseudo grains: amaranth, buckwheat, quinoa, teff, kaniwa. These are my favorites.
- Wheat and related grains: wheatberries, bulgur, farro, freekeh, emmer, kamut, einkorn, …
- Millets: pearl millet, finger millet, kodo millet, proso millet, barnyard millet, little millet, foxtail millet)
- Other grains: oats, barley, spelt, sorghum, rye, corn, triticale, …
- No Rice! I don't buy any rice (brown, red, black, purple, wild, …) because rice has too much arsenic these days.
Organic vs non-organic? Organic is preferable but not necessary. See Organic Foods for details.
I have prepared sweet porridge with all of the whole grains listed below. It's always so tasty!
My breakfast recipes: Sweet Porridge with Rolled Oats and Sweet Porridge with Steel Cut Oats.
I soak amaranth overnight, then boil in the morning. An amaranth-based sweet porridge reminds me of 'karah prasad' served in Gurudwaras (Sikh temples). With the introduction of dates, dried figs, dried peaches, raisins, bananas, blueberries and sweet cherries, we can make this porridge incredibly tasty like dessert.
My breakfast recipes: Sweet Porridge with Amaranth.
My breakfast recipes: Sweet Porridge with Teff.
My breakfast recipes: Sweet Porridge with Quinoa.
Raw buckwheat: I was surprised to learn that buckwheat can be eaten raw after overnight soaking! In fact, we can soak buckwheat for about 15 minutes at night, then discard the water and let buckwheat seeds remain wet overnight. See Sprouted Buckwheat Recipes and Raw Buckwheat Porridge.
Buckwheat (Whole): Buckwheat is also sold as Buckwheat, Whole (Azure Organics) — has a hard shell and takes an incredibly long time to cook in a pot; a pressure-cooking device like Instant Pot or pressure cooker would be necessary. A technique that I haven't yet tried is to dry roast Whole Buckwheat, then boil.
Kasha: A third form of buckwheat is called Kasha (Toasted Buckwheat Groats, Azure Organics) which I don't buy — I prefer untoasted buckwheat.
My breakfast recipes: Sweet Porridge with Buckwheat.
Hulled vs pearled: I prefer hulled barley because it has more bran and germ than pearled barley because it is less polished; see Barley: Hulled or Pearled?
My breakfast recipes: Sweet Porridge with Barley
Wheatberries are basically wheat in their intact form. I tried sprouting them and they were chewy. Over time, I gravitated away from wheatberries for no explicable reason; I find other grains and pseudo-grains more interesting: amaranth, quinoa, teff, oats, spelt, and so on. A good friend of mine buys rye and wheatberries for bread making. At his place, I was able to make fresh rolled wheatberries using a flaking machine :)
My breakfast recipes: Sweet Porridge with Cracked Wheat ('Dalia') and Sweet Porridge with (Rolled) Wheatberries.
My breakfast recipes: Sweet Porridge with Kamut.
Einkorn sprouts easily! I use it for raw breakfast recipes.
My breakfast recipes: Sweet Porridge with Einkorn.
My breakfast recipes: Sweet Porridge with Kaniwa
If we enjoy rolled grains, we can prepare them fresh every day by investing in a flaking machine like KoMo FlocMan Oat/Grain Electric Flaker ($$$).
My breakfast recipes: Sweet Porridge with Rye.
My breakfast recipes: Sweet Porridge with Spelt.
Sometimes, I cook a multi-grain cereal combination like Bob's Red Mill 6-Grain Cereal or Medium Cracked 9-Grain Mix at Azure or multi-grain flakes at Trader Joe's (with rye, barley, whole wheat and rye).
Dr Greger has a BROL (Barley, Rye, Oats, Lentils) recipe which combines three whole grains and one beans.
My breakfast recipes: Sweet Porridge with Mixed Grains.
Over the years, I have prepared breakfast with all of these grains: barley, corn, millets (many varieties), oats, rice (many varieties), rye, sorghum, teff, triticale, wheat (bulgur, freekeh, durum wheat, khorasan wheat / kamut) and wild rice. I also cooked ancient grains like einkorn, emmer and spelt. And I also experimented with pseudo-grains like amaranth, buckwheat, quinoa, teff and kaniwa.
Which ones do I like the most?
Steel cut oats need about 15-20 minutes of boiling. Sometimes, I prepare Quick Cook Steel Cut Oats which require only 5-7 minutes of boiling. I also like rolled oats which only need soaking. I sometimes heat them up in a microwave.
Barnyard millet or quinoa come in handy when I have less time. Both require about 7-10 mins of boiling. Barnyard millet is a specific variety of millet that is used for breaking fasts in India. It has many names in Indian languages: see this article.
Favorite grain: amaranth! Its texture reminds me of 'karah prasad' served in Gurudwaras. I really like it with shredded coconut.
Teff and kaniwa are two more grains that I love.
I've also tried hullless barley (different from pearled barley), kamut, sorghum (jowar) and wheatberry. All of these took a long long time to cook, so I stopped using them. Among these, I really liked the taste of jowar (sorghum) and I feel that if it were slow cooked in traditional clay pots or maybe a crockpot slow cooker, it would be delectable! I haven't tried (because I never had clay pots or slow cookers for experimentation).
I have prepared a sweet porridge for breakfast with all of the grains listed below too! But I don't have pictures (yet).
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