Serene Chats: “I love to soak my grains for the extra creamy texture it brings, the characteristic tang, the release of extra nutrition and for the fact that they are more easily digested this way. With ten children still living at home, I soak bulk amounts over the weekend so that I can cook it all up on Monday morning and then each week starts me off with a giant pot of deliciously fermented, chewy grains for breakfast for the whole week…” This recipe is found in the “Sunrise Eats – Good Morning Grains” section of our Trim Healthy Mama Cookbook. This is a family-serve recipe that feeds 6 to 8 people with lots of leftovers for more meals.
Super Prepared Purist Grains
Description
Serene Chats: "I love to soak my grains for the extra creamy texture it brings, the characteristic tang, the release of extra nutrition and for the fact that they are more easily digested this way. With ten children still living at home, I soak bulk amounts over the weekend so that I can cook it all up on Monday morning and then each week starts me off with a giant pot of deliciously fermented, chewy grains for breakfast for the whole week..." This recipe is found in the "Sunrise Eats - Good Morning Grains" section of our Trim Healthy Mama Cookbook. This is a family-serve recipe that feeds 6 to 8 people with lots of leftovers for more meals.
Ingredients
Instructions
- Place the grain, starter (or rye flour), and enough warm water to cover in a large pot. Cover with a loose-fitting lid or tea towel, and place in a warm environment. (Don’t stress about this. I usually just place it on the warming center on my stove for a few hours and then remove it to sit on my counter next to my stove, where it will collect some warmth from the cooking environment at meal times.)
- After 24 hours, drain the grain through a colander and add fresh warm water and fresh starter or flour. Cover loosely and leave for an additional 24 hours (see Note), then drain again.
- Put the soaked grain and the salt in a large pot and add enough water to cover to the first knuckle of your middle finger, when your finger touches the top of the grains. Bring to a boil over high heat. As soon as it boils, cover with a fitted lid. Turn the heat all the way down to low, and simmer, stirring occasionally, until the grain is deliciously tender and chewy (approximately 30 minutes, depending on type of grain used).
Note
Recipe Notes
From page 250, Trim Healthy Mama Cookbook:
"We go into fine detail on whether or not soaking is a must for grains in Trim Healthy Mama plan – Keep it Simple, Keep it Sane. Our official stance is… drum roll… you sure don’t have to do it but you might just wanna!
I store the leftovers after Monday morning’s breakfast in gallon sized zippies in the fridge and then each morning (bar weekends when my children fry up eggs on toast), the one child assigned as my breakfast helper will put enough soaked grain for all the children in a pot, pour boiling water over it and reheat it in a snap for breakfast. Into their own bowls of oatmeal my children stir in butter, pour in some raw milk, add a little honey and a doonk of stevia, cinnamon and vanilla and chow down. If my husband and I are choosing to eat grain that morning I take our potion and make "Creamy Grains" with it ("Creamy Grains" recipes, starting in the Trim Healthy Mama Cookbook on pages 252-253).
Fermented or soured foods are naturally preserved by the flourishing of good bacteria and the killing off of the bad kind of microbes. This soaked grain is always just as fresh a full week later as when I first prepare it. I think if there was any left-over it would go another week but I haven't been able to test this with all the hungry mouths in my home. This recipe has been halved from what I make in my home, but it still makes a lot. At the end of week if you still have leftovers then you can freeze little single serve portions to quickly thaw for Creamy Grains future use. Feel free to halve this recipe if you have a tiny household or are living alone but I still think you should make enough that you have this yummy E option available during your week and plenty to freeze. This way you won't have to soak every single weekend and that is a plus."
Note: It is not absolutely necessary to soak all grain for 48-hours. It does make them more tangy and digestible but 24 hours is efficient for many grains. Steel cut oats however are the kind that need the full 48 hours for complete healthy culturing. Rolled oats will not stand up to 48 hours. Their outer shell is no longer intact so a 24-hour soak will be sufficient, if you’d prefer to use those.
Sourdough Starter, page 207 of the Trim Healthy Mama Cookbook.
Creamy Grains (pages 252-253)
