We tried amaranth porridge for breakfast yesterday. It didn’t go well.
We embarked on this path a few days ago, when Arne sent me this article by Mark Bittman, a long-time champion of sensible eating, and David Katz, founding director of Yale’s Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center. It didn’t contain much information we didn’t already know, which was kind of the point: What it did was remind us, amid the constant storm of fad diets and questionable nutrition research, what we already believed about healthy eating.
We decided to recommit ourselves. I posted the building blocks of healthy eating, as stated in the Bittman/Katz article, on the chalkboard in the kitchen. Vegetables, beans, water, etc. Important things to try to get more of. Most important to us, though, is avoiding processed food where possible, focusing on food made by human hands from real, fresh ingredients.
We zeroed in on breakfast as a place we needed a change: Arne often just grabs a couple granola bars as he runs out the door in the morning, and (confession!) while I sometimes have granola bars too, I have a weakness for Toaster Scrambles and microwave sausage biscuits. Or I skip breakfast altogether.
Arne hit on the idea of starting our mornings with whole-grain porridges, cooked in the rice cooker or prepped in some other way that would require very little time and effort in the morning. A field trip to the Co-Op‘s bulk food aisle yielded bags of a variety of whole-grain flakes (barley, rye, and wheat) and a bag of teeny-tiny golden pearls of amaranth, an Aztec “superfood.” The first experiment was a smash success: Arne mixed the three kinds of flakes with some oats from our pantry, then cooked them in the rice cooker on the porridge setting with a little brown sugar and some cinnamon. It smelled heavenly, tasted great – a little earthier and fuller-flavored than plain oatmeal – and took very little time.
Then it was the amaranth’s turn. Arne had found a recipe that involved soaking the amaranth overnight, which the author said would allow it to be cooked to doneness in just a few minutes in the morning. Supposedly it would have a beguiling corn-like flavor.
Before we went to bed, Arne stirred the tiny grains into a pot of water. They spread across the top like bubbles of fat on top of chicken soup. Arne poked them with a spoon and exclaimed at the fascinating rafts and whorls they made as they floated there.
In the morning, he put the pot on to boil. Boil it did, and the tiny granules continued to put on an interesting show as the water bubbled beneath them, but they seemed impervious to it. The suggested cooking time passed, then passed again, but the shape and firmness and color of the amaranth did not change. Finally, after about 20 minutes, the grains turned kind of translucent and moist – but by no means had all of the water been absorbed.
Arne tasted the porridge and looked at the cookbook. “It says it will always be a little crunchy,” he reported, so we decided it was done. He spooned small portions into rice bowls, including as little extra water as possible, and squeezed a little honey on top. I added a sliver of butter to each bowl and we sat down to eat.
And took a bite.
I wish I had a picture of our faces.
The flavor of the amaranth was, as promised, sort of sweet and corn-like. A little reminiscent of quinoa, too. Actually pretty nice. But it took a little while to realize that, because the texture… the texture was unlike that of anything I’ve ever put in my mouth.
As I bit down to try to crush the tiny grains, they seemed to disappear into the crevices in my teeth. It was incredibly disconcerting. After a few cautious bites, I decided maybe I needed to eat it in larger spoonfuls. That was not the answer. The larger bulk of amaranth grains in my mouth added an overall impression of gumminess to the sandy crunch. Somehow, the porridge managed to seem both horribly overcooked and somewhat underdone at the same time.
Arne managed to eat the whole bowlful. I tried, I really did, but gave up after about five small bites (and that one big one). Every time I started chewing a new spoonful, I could feel my face screwing up into an involuntary moue of quizzical disgust.
We threw the rest of the pot away.
Maybe we did it wrong? If we’d cooked it longer, would we have come to some kind of sweet spot? Another recipe I found online suggests we needed more water and more time to get a creamy – which I hope means edible – porridge. There’s still some amaranth left in that little bulk bag, so maybe we’ll try it sometime.
Let me know if you’ve tried amaranth, how you cooked it, and how you liked it!
Talk to me!