How to cook buckwheat on water in a saucepan
Perhaps it is difficult to find cereals more useful than buckwheat. Strengthening the walls of blood vessels, improving the functioning of the digestive organs, saturating the body with iron, antioxidant action – this is not a complete list of reasons why buckwheat must certainly be present in the diet of every person.

Step by step instructions for cooking buckwheat

So, you bought a package of this healthy cereal and decided to cook porridge. Let’s figure out how to properly boil buckwheat in water and what you need to know for this.

Step #1. Go through the grits

Like any natural product, buckwheat cannot be perfect – it always comes across black grains and some kind of extraneous debris. Therefore, do not be too lazy to sort out the cereal. Of course, you should not take it apart grain by grain, but try to remove at least the most conspicuous impurities. Then buckwheat should be washed under running water several times.

Step #2. Ignite in a frying pan

This stage is not mandatory in the process of preparing buckwheat porridge, but if you want to get a truly tasty, crumbly and fragrant dish, then calcine the cereal in a dry frying pan. You need to “fry” buckwheat until a light aroma is felt – at this stage, the pan must be removed from the heat, otherwise the future porridge will burn.

Step #3. soak in water

If you are not very pressed for time, and you are preparing dinner, say, for tomorrow, it would be nice to soak buckwheat in water for a couple of hours or overnight. You can do this right in the bowl of the multicooker or in the pan, in which you are going to cook the planned dish later. True, the longer the groats stand, the more boiled it will turn out. Therefore, be guided by your own taste, what result you want to get.

This step will significantly reduce the future cooking time: in a few hours, buckwheat will absorb all the water, swell, and you just have to boil it until cooked.

Step number 4. Cook buckwheat

If you pre-soaked buckwheat, then add water to it so that it covers the cereal, and put on a slow fire. If not, then boil water, the volume of which should be 2 times the volume of buckwheat, salt and pour out the cereal. If you are cooking porridge in a slow cooker, then it is not necessary to boil water in advance.

Step number 5. Add oil and seasonings

Add some vegetable oil and any seasonings of your choice to the future porridge. Herbs de Provence, dried garlic, and dry vegetable and spice soup dressings work well. Salt to taste.

You need to cook buckwheat for 15 minutes if you soaked it in advance, and 25-30 minutes if not. In the slow cooker, select the “Buckwheat” or “Milk porridge” mode.

Tip:

During cooking, do not stir the porridge – this will reduce its taste and lengthen the cooking time.

Step number 6. Serve on the table

When the buckwheat becomes completely soft (you can determine this by taking a sample), and there is no water left in the pan, you can turn it off. If it turned out that the water boiled away before the cereal was cooked, you can put about a third of a pack of butter in it and cook a little more. When the porridge is ready, leave the pan on the stove under the lid for a while, and then serve the dish on the table.

Tip:

While the porridge is cooking, you can prepare the dressing for it. For example, mushrooms fried with onions go very well with buckwheat, so in those 15-20 minutes that the cereal is being prepared, you will just have time to chop the onion, wash the mushrooms and fry it all in vegetable oil. However, buckwheat boiled in water is good in itself as a wonderful side dish for meat and fish dishes. And by adding milk and sugar to it, you will get a classic porridge, which you probably loved as a child.

Popular questions and answers

What is the best pot to cook buckwheat in?

A thick-bottomed pot is ideal: it warms up longer and retains temperature longer, and also does not allow steam to escape, which makes the porridge more fragrant and tender. In addition, in such a pan, your dish will most likely not burn.

Is it better to cook porridge with water or milk?

Properly boil buckwheat in water. Milk can be added after it has cooked, or shortly before it is turned off. So you keep the taste of both milk and buckwheat.

Is it possible to cook buckwheat in the oven and how to do it?

Yes, you can. Moreover, it will turn out even tastier than on the stove. The principle is exactly the same as in a slow cooker, the oven must be heated to 200 degrees, put a pan with cereal filled with water for about 20 minutes. Porridge cooked in the oven will be even more tender and fragrant.

How to cook green buckwheat?

Just like the usual one. Green buckwheat is a real storehouse of vitamins and minerals, but it is devoid of the characteristic aroma of cereals we are used to.

How to cook buckwheat in the microwave?

Pour boiling water over the sorted and washed cereals and put in the microwave for 10-15 minutes.

Is it possible to eat buckwheat with diabetes?

Not only possible, but necessary. Buckwheat is an ideal product for diabetics and an excellent substitute for wheat and rice that are forbidden for them. You can also use buckwheat flour and buckwheat pasta.

Why does buckwheat not turn out crumbly?

It is worth noting that properly boiling buckwheat in water so that it is crumbly and fragrant is a kind of art in which not a single detail should be neglected. So why, sometimes, instead of a beautiful crumbly porridge, we get a liquid slurry? There may be several reasons.

Firstly, in order to cook exemplary buckwheat porridge, the groats should be calcined in a dry frying pan before cooking. This will not only give it a unique flavor, but also make the grains stronger. Secondly, it is necessary to remove the porridge from the fire in time, catching exactly the moment when it is ready, but not yet digested – the longer the buckwheat is cooked, the less crumbly it is. Thirdly, do not overdo it with water. When there is too much of it and it does not boil away during the cooking process, the result is something more like a thick soup. And fourthly, as mentioned above, the longer the cereal is kept in water before cooking, the softer it will become.

However, all cooking methods are good in their own way, because how many people, so many tastes: someone loves friable buckwheat, and someone is more boiled. So you need to cook, focusing solely on your own preferences.

Is it possible to cook buckwheat in bags?

You can also cook buckwheat in water in bags. On the shelves of stores it is easy to find such portioned packaging. This is a very convenient form for those who dream of preparing a healthy dish, but do not have enough time and energy for this. One bag is enough for lunch or dinner, and the porridge turns out to be very tasty with almost no effort. To do this, just put one bag in boiling water (the amount of which should be such as to cover it completely) and cook for about 20 minutes if you want to get more crumbly buckwheat, and 30 for making soft and boiled porridge. It is not necessary to cover the pan with a lid – buckwheat in bags is cooked in an open dish.

After the required time has elapsed, remove the pan from the heat, drain the water, and open the bag and pour its contents onto a plate.

Cooking buckwheat in bags saves a lot of time, because it does not need to be sorted out or washed, and after cooking, all that remains is to rinse the pan, while it takes a long time to wash it from ordinary porridge.

By the way, if you need buckwheat to prepare some more complex dish, and there is only packaged cereals in the house, it doesn’t matter – just cut the bags, pour buckwheat out of them and cook it with meat, mushrooms or vegetables to your liking.

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