One cup of amaranth contains a nutrient dense calories along with nearly 10 grams of protein and a significant amount of essential minerals.
Amaranth pops quicker than popcorn and is quite small in size. Although it can be enjoyed on its own, puffed amaranth works well in your favorite recipes for baked goods like homemade granola bars, muffins or trail mix.
You can even create your own popped amaranth cereal. Puffed barley creates a soft yet chewy texture and is nutty and toasty in flavor. Buckwheat, like sorghum, is a popular ancient grain that serves as a popcorn alternative. Puffed buckwheat is wonderfully crunchy and tender in texture. Puffed buckwheat is rather small, which is why it works best on top of your favorite dishes like overnight oats or sprinkled on your favorite fresh fruit slices.
Just be sure to include a spoonful of nut or seed butter so they stick! Quinoa is another ancient grain that pops small, but packs a big flavor. The main difference lies in the flavor. How did I not know that just about any whole grain can be popped on the stovetop like popcorn? I just saw this idea on Epicurious and thought, yeah right.
And then little visions of puffed rice and popped wheat on cereal boxes started flitting through my memory and holy spelt! Of course! So I went to my cupboard and pulled out whatever grains were there and got popping.
I used a regular heavy saucepan on medium-high heat. Let the pan get quite hot, just before smoking — enough that a drop of water sizzles and quickly evaporates.
Toss in the grains; no more than a single layer with room. I took each of mine off the heat when they stopped crackling, before they got too dark to avoid the bitterness of over-toasting. None of them took more than two minutes. What I love about this is that whole grains are all too often dismissed because of long cooking times and heavier texture — popping makes mincemeat out of both of those excuses. Pearl barley: Raw pearl barley is very hard. I know because I just bit into one. Some instructions say to cover the pot while your grains pop, some say to leave it uncovered; some use oil, as with popcorn, while some don't; the more advanced among these directions, involving the heartier, traditionally longer-cooking grains—wheat, barley, et al.
All of these recipes are unified on one point: the pan on the stove must be very hot when you add the grains. And it is widely agreed that quinoa pops the easiest—just throw it in a pan and go. This was not my experience. My quinoa didn't pop at all. I did it all the ways: covered pan, uncovered pan. Oil, no oil. All it did was burn. I threw it out. Here's where I think I went wrong: the pan wasn't sufficiently hot.
After I'd thrown out all of that quinoa, I tossed the next thing, barley, into the by-this-point-well-heated pan and wouldn't you know: it popped. Well, not exactly popped, like popcorn. Better, I think, than those Arrowhead Mills puffed grains, which have always tasted like styrofoam to me. Sophia's comment: "I think it needs a flavor. We had a pretty rushed mealtime last night.
I appreciated the convenience of only having to cook one thing from scratch. No comments:. Newer Post Older Post Home.
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