Planting and Growing Quinoa

Quinoa is a small, hearty and delicious grain similar to millet. Though native to the Andes Mountains, its resilient nature allows it to grow in certain parts of the U.S. as well. Here are few tips from Carla Emery on growing, harvesting, and cooking quinoa. 

Climate: Colorado and New Mexico are good places to grow quinoa. It thrives in the 6,000-7,000-foot zone in the central Rocky Mountain area, in northern California and northward near the Pacific Ocean, and in the interior Northwest as well. Extremely hot weather actually holds back the seed setting process of this crop. According to Steve Solomon, "Its seeds sprout in chilly soil, and its frost-hardy seedlings may tolerate night temperatures in the low 20s."

Planting: Sow in spring in fertile soil as soon as the soil is warm (April or May). Steve Solomon again: "Quinoa must be sown early while there remains adequate soil moisture... early sowing - leading to the earliest possible harvest when weather is most likely to be dry - is essential... One organic farmer in the dry highlands of eastern Washington's Cascade foothills grows quinoa like wheat, because when crowded and under competition, the plants don't branch, but instead concentrate the harvest into a single seed head that can be harvested with a combine like wheat. I think the gardener will do better planting in rows about four feet apart, the seed sprinkled thinly in the row and gradually thinned to about eight inches in the row... Far less than an ounce of seed will sow 100 row feet, yielding 25 to 50 pounds of seed." 

Keep the seedbed damp until it has germinated. You can eat the young greens you get from thinning the plants; they're nutritious and tasty. Quinoa will grow about 4 feet high. Steve Solomon wrote, "Keep quinoa well-weeded to allocate all soil moisture to the crop. With only a little fertilizer, quinoa grows fast to a magnificent six or seven feet tall, with numerous bushy side shoots."

Harvesting and Using Quinoa

Harvesting: About mid-summer, it grows a sizable seed head heavy with tiny seeds. Harvest when dead ripe. You can thresh out the grain directly from the field, but threshing will be easier if you harvest and then dry the plants indoors a while more before the flailing. Steve Solomon: "The main hazard is rain. Should the drying seed be moistened, it will sprout right in the head; so if rain threatens once the seed is drying, the plants should be cut, bundled, and hung to finish under cover...When the heads are dry, thresh the seed by walking on the stalks, spread on a tarp. Clean by pouring the seed back and forth between two buckets in a mild breeze."

Of Quinoa and Saponin: Steve Solomon: "The seed coat contains a bitter, somewhat poisonous soap or saponin that prevents insect damage and bird predation, but also must be removed before we can eat the grain.  Fortunately, the saponin can, with patience, be soaked out at home; commercially grown quinoa, which is beginning to appear in health-food stores, conveniently has the saponins and seed coat mechanically removed." Wash only as much quinoa as you're going to cook and eat very soon. The saponin coating needs to be on if the grain is to be stored.

• Steve Solomon's Saponin Soak-Out. "Soak a pint of dry seed overnight in a half-gallon mason jar with a screen lid such as is used to sprout alfalfa, then drain and refill. Continue soaking the seed and rinsing with cold water two to four times a day. Some varieties have harder seed coats containing more saponin than others, and the hardness of your water will regulate the effectiveness of soaking. The foaming saponins may be removed in 36 hours at best; when the water stops foaming when rinsed, the seed is ready for cooking. If 72 hours of rinsing and soaking pass with no end to the foaming, bring the seed to a boil for only a moment, pour off the hot soapy water, cover again, boil rapidly again for only a moment, and pour off the water a second time. Now the seed is ready to cook."

• Other Saponin Wash-Out Systems. Blend about 1⁄2 cup of quinoa with cold water at lowest speed. Keep pouring off the foaming water and adding fresh water. Repeat until the blending doesn't release any more foam. Another system is to make yourself a quinoa-washing bag out of a loose-weave cloth like muslin. Then put in the grain, tie the bag shut, and wash in a series of cold-water baths until there's no more foam released. 

Cooking Quinoa: Steve Solomon: "Add enough water to just about cover the soaked grain; simmer for 20 minutes or so. The cereal is good any time of day. Nutritionally it is oil-rich, and leaves you feeling satisfyingly full for a long time, much like oats." Quinoa grain has a delicate flavor and twice the protein of rice. Substitute in any rice recipes. Quinoa will expand to four times the original bulk in the cooking, so 1 cup of the uncooked grain will give you 4 cups to serve.

 

Grinding Your Own Grain

If you’ve never eaten food made from freshly ground grain, you’ve never realized how flat and insipid the flour you’re used to really tastes. You can home-grind all the grains, including rye, wheat, corn, rice, barley, and oats, as well as soybeans, chestnuts, peanuts, lentils, and dried peas to make a variety of flours. In the old days you took your grain to a mill and had the miller grind it. For payment, old-time law stipulated that the miller was entitled to one-tenth part of what he ground — except for corn, in which case the cut was one-seventh. That’s because corn is the hardest of all grains to grind. When you’re shopping, keep in mind that some mills can handle anything but corn. The basic tip is to make sure your food is dry before you put it through.

Storing Home-Ground Flour

Don't make all your grain into flour at once. Whole-grain cornmeal or wheat flour or any other flour ground at home loses quality— flavor and vitamins — almost literally every hour it waits between the grinding and the baking. Home-ground flour and cornmeal has a higher lipid (oil) content and is not degerminated or bleached. It’s therefore better food for you and any other form of life, so it won’t keep like store bought flour — unless you freeze it. As soon as your grain is ground, the oxidation processes begin; ultimately they will turn the fat in it rancid. Rancid fat is not deadly poisonous; it’s merely slightly harmful to eat and unpleasant to taste. Weevils and other insects are also more inclined to get into and be a noxious presence in flour than whole grain. Home-ground flour can also absorb odor and dampness, so it’s best to store it in an airtight container — for a small quantity, a glass jar; for large quantities, one of the 5-gal. metal or plastic cans that you can buy with fitted lids. Best of all is to grind the flour just before using it. If you plan to keep it more than a week, freeze it!

Buying Your Grinder

Shop around, comparing prices and available models.  Because there is such a confusing array of choices, tell the grinder salesperson you size of household; what grain or seeds you plan to grind, shell or crush for oil; and if you'll also be grinding feed for livestock, how many and what kind.  Health food stores or co-ops sometimes have grinders for sale, but they're not as likely to be able to give you expert advice.  Grinders are now available that can operate either by hand or by electricity at the flip of a switch.

Nonelectric Grinders

Mortar and Pestle

You can use a mortar made of a hollowed block of wood, with a heavy chunk of wood for a pestle, but stone works better. Find a flat, smooth rock with a center depression large enough to grind on and a smooth rock to grind with.

Hand-Cranked Models

A typical home grain grinder sets on a tabletop. There is usually a large screw clamp to provide firm attachment to a bench or table while you are grinding. The hand models work as long as you have the strength and will to turn the crank. Hand grinders come in various sizes. The Family Grain Mill, made in Germany, provides the best-quality flour of any of the grinders— bread quality with only one grinding! It is not too hard to turn and is reasonably priced (about $130). With the small, bargain hand grinders, it is hard work to get grain fine enough so as to not have chunks in it. The worst of the manual grinders produces a “fine meal” rather than a “flour” on the first grind. In order to get a flour grind, you have to crank very hard and put it through more than once. Then sift out the “grits” and put through again, and so on until you are satisfied with your flour. Feed the grits to your livestock, or cook for cereal.

Powered Grinding

Electric grinding is easy and quick, and blenders are easy to buy. They will work to grind a small amount of grain at any one time, such as the grain for your day’s cooking needs. But grinding is hard on blender blades, and they can’t handle bulk jobs. In most commercial mills today, flour is made by crushing the grain between a series of rollers, much like a wringer washing machine. The expensive electric models for home use can put out around 10 to 16 lb. of flour per hour, depending on size, and cost several hundred dollars. They are kitchen appliances. You plug one in and pour your grain in the hopper, and it grinds your baking flour. One or two quarts of grain at a time is about right for a small family.

Stone Mill

“Stone grinding” means that the grain is reduced to flour texture by rubbing against a stone surface in a manner similar to the old-style water-powered gristmills. Stone wheel mills, whether electric- or hand-powered, cannot be used for soybeans because of the oil from the beans, but they will produce a fine flour. Incidentally, the more a grinder grinds, the better job it does, because the stones grind themselves into a better and better fit.

Burr Mill

This type of mill crushes the grain between a stationary heavy wheel and a revolving one. These are good for people who want to grind feed for livestock as well as their own meal and flour. A burr mill grinds finer than a hand-cranked household mill, although you may need to

run it through more than once — maybe 3 times for baking flour. A burr mill is also the answer for folks who want to grind flour in larger quantities than household mills can handle. The drawback of a burr mill is that it grinds any grain fine but will not grind unthreshed grain-straw combinations. Incidentally, don’t run the burrs on empty. It wears them out faster.

Roller Mill

You can buy an attachment for some household mills that will make rolled oats, wheat, or rye flakes ($99 attachment for the Family Grain Mill). Or get the Marga Grain Roller/Flaker, which has three hardened steel rollers and can be adjusted to make different grades of either flour or flakes, $70 from the Urban Homemaker (see “Buying Your Grinder” below). A roller-type mill is the best for rolling and flaking grains, but it’s not good for making flours. They are less expensive than hammer mills and require less power. They work by mashing the grain between two clothes-wringer-type rollers. You can set a roller mill to hull, crack, and grind grain. The grain will be quite fine, but not fine enough for baking. A good roller mill with crusher rollers can chop corn or grain on the stalk, wet or dry, into silage. A roller mill is what you need if you want to grow one of the grains that doesn’t thresh clean and must be dehulled after threshing and before grinding (such as oats or barley).

Hammer Mill

Hammer mills do big grinding jobs. They also use a lot of electricity and cost a lot. The hammer mill basically grinds anything. You can put whole grain right on the stalk into a hammer mill, and it will turn out a fine livestock feed that includes roughage and avoids threshing. You can mix the feed beforehand and then mill it, and grind corn on the cob. In some cases you can adjust these grinders to make cornmeal, too, but usually a hammer mill

always lets some coarser material through and won’t make a baking-quality flour.

[Adapted from the "Grinding Your Grain" section of Chapter 3: Grasses, Grains, & Canes. Other topics include: Cereal, Fighting Pests in Grain, and growing grains. 

Not Your Average Cornflakes: Healthy, Filling Homemade Cereal

While it may be easier to grab that box of sugar cereal on sale for $1.99 at the local grocery store, making your own cereal can be rewardingly fun and nutritious. Carla Emery gives us recipes that will help keep you full all day long.

Basic Cooking Procedure: The general rule is the larger your particles, the longer they will take to soften and the more water they will absorb. For cereals ground as fine as cornmeal (or finer), you add the cereal slowly to rapidly boiling water, stirring at the same time. In the case of fineparticled cereal, stir continuously until it has set and not at all afterward if possible. Cook until done. Watch carefully so it doesn’t scorch, or cook in a double boiler. Particularly fine-grained, flour-type cereals should be first mixed with cold liquid to keep them from lumping, or made gravy-style.

Cooking Whole Grains: Cooking in a double boiler is the safest method. Cooking in a pressure cooker is the shortest. Cooking whole brown rice, barley, or other medium- hard grains takes 40–45 minutes in a regular pan or 20 minutes in a pressure cooker. Cooking cracked wheat or precooked or soft grains takes only 20–30 minutes regular, 5–10 pressure. Whole wheat berries, whole rye, whole oats, and other very hard grains take 1 hour or more regular, 35 minutes in the pressure cooker. When pressure cooking grains, be sure to use enough water, especially for the hard grains. They soak up a lot!

Homemade Quick-Cooking Cereal

Coarse grains like whole or cracked grains take a while to cook. You can speed that up by precooking them for 2 or 3 minutes in boiling water and then letting them soak in that liquid for several hours, or better yet overnight. Then they will cook up faster than they would have otherwise.

Cooking Ground Grains: You can thicken the cereal in any recipe by adding more grain, or thin it by using less. You can cook it in milk instead of water, in part milk and part water, in all water, or in a fruit sauce. You can add raisins, dried, fresh, or canned fruit, nuts, any sweetening, or yogurt at any stage. Salt isn’t necessary. In general, about 4 parts liquid to 1 part cereal is appropriate for coarsely ground cereals from the whole grain. Rolled cereals take 2 parts liquid to 1 part cereal. A “gruel” means a very thin cereal. A “mush” is a medium one, and a “porridge” means a very thick one.

Precooked Cereal

This is how you can have homemade cereal for breakfast without getting up earlier than you want to. Cook it the day before and refrigerate overnight. If you cooked it in a double boiler, it can be warmed up in the same container. Or start it very late in the evening and let cook all night at a low temperature. If you plan to warm up cracked wheat, oatmeal, or another coarse grain preparation, use an extra 1⁄2 c. water when you make it the night before. It also helps if you heat the milk or cream to be used on warmed-up cereal. I like cereal for lunch with the children, too. And, ah, yes, it is modern times, and cereal reheats nicely in a microwave.