So you have your wheat, but what do you do with it?
There are three ways to eat your wheat:
- Whole
- Cracked or ground into flour
- Sprouted
Today we’ll be talking about the simplest way to eat it, simply cooking the wheat as you might cook rice. Although you’ll find that cooked wheat berries are far chewier than rice. You might like the texture, you might not. It’s a personal preference thing.
This recipe makes a large quantity of wheat berries, but you can store the extra in the refrigerator or freezer and use in other recipes. Throw a handful of berries in soup, or make a wheat berry salad (Kraft Foods has a recipe that looks very good.)
The recipe that I give here is very basic and open to a tremendous amount of adaptation. Instead of water, try cooking the wheat in fruit juice, vegetable or chicken broth. Try toasting the wheat in a dry frying pan, or in the oven, before cooking it.
Basic Cooked Wheat Berries
1 C wheat berries
2 1/2 C water, juice or broth
You can soak the wheat 12 hours (overnight) in 2 C water, if you like. This is not strictly necessary, but it will cut down on cooking time.
Stovetop: Combine water and wheat in a saucepan. Bring to a boil, then lower heat to a simmer. Cover and cook until all the water is absorbed and grain is soft, approximately 1 to 1 1/2 hours.
Pressure Cooker: Lower the amount of liquid to 2 cups. Combine water and wheat in a pressure cooker and seal. Cook at 15 pounds for 15 minutes, according to the instructions that came with your pressure cooker.
Slow Cooker: Combine water and wheat in a slow cooker. Cook on low for 8 to 10 hours.
Breakfast Wheat Berries
Cooking in the slow cooker is a great way to have an easy and healthy hot breakfast in the mornings. Just put the wheat berries in the slow cooker the night before, with your choice of dried fruit. Some steel-cut oats, if you have them, would be nice. You could use old-fashioned rolled oats, too, and cracked wheat if you have any on hand. (We’ll talk about how to make that in a later post.) Throw in some spices and salt (cardamom, cinnamon or nutmeg would all be good.) Cook the whole thing in water or fruit juice (don’t forget to add enough liquid to cook the oats, too.)
If you prefer your dried cranberries or raisins to be chewier, stir them into the cereal just before serving. Add sugar and milk in the bowl.