stories : The Ten
Whole Grains with Flavor
They’re not just good for you, they’re good
By Nicole Spiridakis
1. Use half whole-wheat pastry flour in cake recipes. Also known as graham flour, it works particularly well in chocolate cake or gingerbread; the pastry flour is a finer ground than regular whole-wheat flour, and in recipes with strong flavors you won’t notice a difference.
2. Use whole-wheat couscous instead of the regular variety. Its rich, nutty flavor is a perfect foil for dishes such as this recipe for white sturgeon with spicy eggplant.
3. Boost the flavor and consistency of brown rice by making it with a cup of vegetable broth, a teaspoon of olive oil, and a pinch of salt. Make extra and freeze in individual serving sizes for a quick and easy weeknight reheat.
4. Or, forget the rice altogether and make quinoa. This whole grain is loaded with protein and cooks up quickly, but don’t forget to rinse it first to remove the soapy residue. This Indian Quinoa Salad is a perfect take-to-work lunch.
5. Go Middle Eastern with bulgur wheat. Dishes such as this Real Tabbouleh, puckery with lemon juice and seasoned with parsley, mint, tomatoes, and shallots, make a simple side dish for meat or fish.
6. Skip semolina pasta in favor of polenta. Look for whole-ground cornmeal (and keep it refrigerated, to preserve freshness), which can also be used in pancakes, corn tortillas, and cornbread. Drape it with roasted vegetables or a meaty tomato sauce. Chowhounds suggest this “no-stir” version.
7. Make some crunchy, tiny, mildly flavored millet. It only takes about 15 minutes to steam. You can add it to meatloaf, or cook it in stock, then add mushrooms, garlic, and black pepper for a savory side. Or try a vegetarian main dish of Olive, Tomato, and Millet-Stuffed Zucchini.
8. Sit down to a bowl of wholesome oats. Whether they’re steel-cut or rolled, you can drizzle them with honey and load them up with dried fruit; for a savory version, sprinkle with salt and douse with milk. Or make Oatmeal-Banana-Raisin Waffles.
9. Instead of potatoes, try a wild rice pilaf made with vegetable broth instead of water, wilted spinach, and slivered almonds. Wild rice is chewy and earthy on its own, but works well in dishes such as this Chicken and Wild Rice Casserole.
10. Make a warming barley soup to ease the season’s turn into spring. Most barley is pearled to remove the inedible outer hull and some of the bran, but it is still considered a whole grain.
CHOW’s The Ten column appears every Tuesday.
I always prefer whole grains as I find them far more flavorful, especially if you toast some of them, such as quinoa or couscous, prior to cooking.
i'm actually having quinoa mixed with some homemade granola for lunch today. my girlfriend made the granola using dried oats, a mix of dried berried, honey roasted almonds, and binded it with a honey and butter combo.
Whole wheat pastry flour and graham flour are not the same thing. Graham flour is a category unto itself, falling outside of both the bread-all purpose-pastry-cake and the whole wheat-white spectrums. It is essentially a more finely ground all purpose white flour, to which has been added coarsely ground bran and germ (the proportions should be such that it is nutritionally identical to whole wheat). It has a lower gluten content than all purpose white flour, and so it is good for cake making. It will lend a distinctly different texture due to the coarse bran, which lightens up the cake some, and is a texture I quite enjoy for many kinds of cake, especially carrot cake. You can find actual whole wheat pastry flour (soft whole wheat berries finely ground) which will have similar gluten levels to cake flour, and gives a more typical cake texture than graham flour. Just make sure to keep in mind that because different varieties of flour have very different densities, you can't substitute 1:1 if you're measuring by volume. Either measure by weight or find the appropriate conversion.
I challenge your assertion in #10 about barley that pearled barley is still considered a whole grain---it is NOT. Hulled barley is the only form in which it is considered a whole grain...please check your data and change your message, it is misleading....here's my resource from worldshealthiestfoods.com:
"Hulled barley: Like the name suggests, the outermost hull of the grain is all that gets removed in this form of barley. While this makes for a chewier grain that requires more soaking and cooking, it also makes for a more nutritious food. Hulled barley is also sometimes called "dehulled barley," and it is the one form of barley what would be considered whole grain.
Pearl barley: Various degrees of polishing, or "pearling" take place in the production of pearl barley. In addition to a polishing off of the outermost hull, the grain's bran layer, and even parts of its inner endosperm layer, may be removed during the pearling process. In general, as you move from regular to medium to fine to baby pearl barley, you find increasing loss of nutrients. Pearl barley is much less chewy and quicker cooking than hulled barley, but it is also much lower in nutrients, and would not be considered whole grain. "