cooking with grains: millet
millet toasting
Grains can be a fun alternative to cooking with beans while still providing fulfilling nutrients and satisfying meal. There are many popular grain including barely, quinoa, buckwheat, rye and millet. Each grain carries its own taste, texture and stars in its own best meals.
Millet is rarely served to humans in the United States – here, it’s the grain most often found in bird feeders. Yet it’s the leading staple grain in India, and is commonly eaten in China, South America, Russia and the Himalayas. Millet is probably not a common guest in your kitchen but I encourage you to invite it to your dinner plate soon!
Millet has a mild flavor and is often mixed with other grains or toasted before cooking, to bring out the full extent of its delicate flavor. Its tiny grain can be white, gray, yellow or red. Millet should be toasted before soaked with water. The toasting process makes the tiny grains pop in the air like an old-fashioned popcorn show and this toasting should prove to be entertaining for any little helpers!
I recently mixed my millet with feta cheese, toasted almonds, parsley and lemon wedges and it was definitely second-helping worthy! Try cooking with a grain today!
How to prepare millet feta dish:
Toast 1 cup of dry millet over medium high heat for or until the grains start to turn golden brown and you can smell a nutty aroma
Add 2 cups of boiling water to the toasted millet and simmer for 20-25 minutes or until the millet has soaked up all of the water
Add 4 ounces of crumbled feta, 1/4 cup of toasted almonds and a small handful of parsley to the millet; mix and serve with lemon wedges
millet meal
