Cooking with wholegrain cereals

Wholegrain cereals are most commonly milled to produce flour but they're excellent cooked whole too. Different species and varieties naturally vary in colour, texture, size and taste, but all tend to have a strong nutty element to their flavour.

Once you have mastered cooking wholegrains they can be used in a wide variety of dishes including salads, stews, soups, and risottos, or as an alternative to rice, pasta or couscous. As with any unfamiliar ingredient, the key is to identify the method of cooking that works best for you (that might be batch cooking or pressure cooking) and the dishes you enjoy cooking and eating.

Whole, pearled and kibbled

Wholegrains are the complete edible seed. Most grains have an inedible fibrous husk or hull, which is either mechanically removed or for ‘naked’ grain varieties naturally falls off when the grain is harvested and threshed.

Pearled grains have been abrasively polished to remove some or all of the outer bran. This reduces the cooking time and produces a softer cooked grain. Brown and white rice are perhaps the most familiar wholegrain and pearled cereals, though not often thought of as such. With barley a distinction is made between lightly polished pot barley and more heavily polished pearled or pearl barley.

Kibbled grains have been coarsely ground. They're mostly produced from the wholegrain and retain all of the bran, endosperm and germ, but cook more quickly than pearled grains as the water and heat can easily penetrate the smaller pieces

Cooking Wholegrains

There are two fundamental approaches to cooking wholegrains:

• The absorption method, most commonly used for rice, is where the grains are simmered in a proportionate amount of water, until the water is absorbed and the grains are cooked.
• The pasta method involves boiling whole grains in a large pot of water, then draining off the excess water when the grains are cooked.

For most of us, the most familiar whole or pearled grain is rice, typically cooked using the absorption method.

Absorption method

This works well for pearled grains and whole oats, but it can be a little inconsistent with grains that require longer cooking. You have to look up the appropriate cooking time and ratio of water to grain, which can vary depending on the variety, age and growing conditions of the grain. Or find out what works by trial and error! You can always add more water as you go if the grain starts to boil dry before it's cooked and tender.

For example, naked barley, black barley and pearled barley all require different ratios of water and cooking time. Hardier grains don’t always cook evenly as the water boils down and steam struggles to penetrate and cook them. For very starchy grains like kibbled barley the absorption method can result in a porridge-like end result as too much starch is released during the cooking process.

Pasta method 

With the pasta method there's no need for a precise ratio of water to grain or an exact cooking time. This method allows all of the grain to absorb water evenly all around, without having to check the pot has boiled dry and consistently results in tender evenly cooked grains. To know when the grains are cooked, simply fish out a grain and bite it in half: an undercooked grain will have a firm white centre (like undercooked pasta) while a cooked grain will be tender all the way through.

To soak or not to soak?

Forward thinkers can soak their grains the night before. This will reduce the cooking time as well as giving an even distribution of moisture through the grains, allowing them to cook evenly without blow-out (where the cooked grain busts out the side of the bran).

Risotto method

As an alternative to cooking wholegrains simply you can also use any grain to create a risotto (we've a few recipes to try) but pearled grains work best for the risotto method as they release the most starch that emulsifies with the fat to create a silk, creamy risotto.

Cooking wholegrains with the pasta method

Boil a large pan of water and season generously. For example roughly 2.5 litres water with 2tsp salt for 200g grains.

Boil the grains until they are cooking to your preferred texture. For grains that require a longer cooking time you may need to top up the water.

Drain well and spread on a baking tray for 10 minutes where they will steam off any excess moisture.

Cooked grains can be stored in the fridge for a couple of days or frozen for a few months. If storing your grains always allow them to cool completely before putting them in a sealed container to avoid microbial growth

Cooking time may vary on the harvest and how long the grain has been stored, but as a rough guide:

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