Do you know how to cook millet?
By now, pretty much everyone has heard about (and is most likely tired of hearing about) quinoa’s superpowers and how to cook quinoa. With all of the hype surrounding quinoa, millet often gets overlooked, which is unfortunate because this ancient seed is highly nutritious (providing copper, magnesium, fiber, iron, and B vitamins) and yields a super fluffy and creamy result when cooked.
Look for millet in the bulk section of Whole Foods or a health food store. It can also often be found in regular grocery stores, packaged by companies like Bob’s Red Mill or Arrowhead Mills. (If nothing else, you can order millet online.)
If you like quinoa—or even if you don’t—chances are high you will like millet just as much… or more!
How to Cook Millet
(makes 2 servings – Feel free to omit the sweetener for a savory millet)
- 1/2 cup dry millet (80g)
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1 cup milk of choice (240g)
- 1 cup water or more milk of choice (240g)
- 2 tbsp sugar of choice or xylitol (22g)
- pinch stevia, or 2 more tbsp sugar of choice
- 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
- optional: raisins, fruit, mini chocolate chips
How to cook millet: In a medium pot, combine the first six ingredients (if using raisins, add them as well), and bring to a boil. Cover and cook on “low” for 20 minutes. Then turn off the heat but leave covered another 20 minutes. Stir. Millet should be thick and fluffy now. If it’s still a bit liquidy, cook uncovered until desired texture is reached. Turn off heat and stir in vanilla extract. If desired, stir in chocolate chips or fruit of choice. Can be eaten hot or cold.
Click for: Breakfast Bowl Millet Calories and Nutrition Facts
Question of the Day:
This question actually has nothing to do with how to cook millet… I’m attending a potluck this coming weekend and would love suggestions of what dessert to bring. So the question of the day is:
Do you have any go-to desserts you think would be good for a potluck?
Link of the Day: Homemade and Healthy Twinkies—with a healthy cream filling.
I just got some millet from Whole Foods the other day, and have yet to try it. Now I know what I’m making. 😀 I love your photography by the way; it looks beautiful!
As for the potluck, I would suggest finger foods (cookies, cupcake/muffins, etc)
I like millet a lot, and sometimes make it as a “carb” side for dinner instead of rice or couscous. Haven’t tried it as a breakfast porridge but now I will!
I don’t know if you’ve ever been to the minimalist baker, but her 7 ingredient vegan cheesecakes are unbelievably good. They are my new favorite to take to potlucks. However, am planning to try your avocado fudge soon. And your black bean brownies are heavenly. So many of my deserts and snacks come from your website. Keep meaning to post reviews. Will do soon. Keep up the delicious work.
I love bringing fruit pizza, streusel bars or a cheesecake if I know I need to bring a big dessert. At most potlucks though, there’s a ton of food, and then I always find that small bites go over better – Oreo truffles, cake pops or mini doughnuts. Or you could always bring your Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Dip, my favorite! 🙂
I would like to try this but was wondering if the millet is ground or is it grains? I have the ground. I’ve tried to like quinoa, but just don’t care for the texture or the flavor, so it sits in my cupboard. Cheese cakes are always good for a potluck. They can be made sugar and grain free, and pretty much no one can tell the difference. I just put a strawberry frozen cheesecake pie in the freezer, but have yet to eat it, so can’t tell you how good it might be! You can find the recipe here. http://www.sugarfreemom.com/recipes/frozen-strawberry-cheesecake-pie-low-carb-gluten-free-no-sugar-added/. I did use a different crust recipe. I used chopped nuts, almond flour, butter and truvia. Then I baked it about 12 minutes. I really like your blog and your recipes!
I used the whole millet. Looks like little spheres 🙂
Thank you. If I don’t like quinoa do you think I’d like this? I do like cream of wheat and oatmeal, if it would be at all similar.
I actually like to make millet porridge using ground millet, and yes it’s very similar to cream of wheat! It’s especially good if you grind the millet, toast it in a little coconut oil on the stove, then add the water or milk (I use water for savory and add a little salt, or I use 1/2 water and 1/2 almond milk for sweet/breakfast porridge) and bring it to a boil, cover it and simmer for 15-20 minutes.
It’s nice to give quinoa and oats a break. I found out about freekeh and it’s tasty to make (and fun to say!). If you don’t have to travel far and don’t mind toting around a cooler, why not vegan ice cream? Always sure to impress: “wow, homemade ice cream that’s vegan!”
Oh man, another yummy super-grain! Trying to get away from oats, so maybe I’ll have to give millet a go for breakfast. I’ve used it in granola bars, but never warm like this. Thanks for sharing!
YUM! I’ve never tried millet before, but ever since I was diagnosed with celiac disease, I’ve been on the lookout for alternative hot cereals to try (I can’t do oats, even if they are gluten free). Millet looks absolutely delicious – thanks for the recipe, and I can’t wait to try it out! Right now, I’m loving quinoa. Particularly, overnight quinoa flakes! YUM!
http://caseythecollegeceliac.blogspot.com/2014/06/overnight-quinoa-flakes.html
Have you ever fixed millet in a slow cooker? I’m wondering if it would work for a fast breakfast.
For the potluck I think anything with fruit because of the time of year. Maybe a fruit salad with coconut whipped cream and nuts.
I haven’t, but I don’t see why it wouldn’t work!
I love millet, but I always forget about it. I’ve never had it sweet, but I’ll have to try!
Perfect! I’ve stopped buying quinoa lately just so I could make use of the bag of millet I have so this recipe is great for me 🙂
Hey! I have been raving about millet for a couple of months! http://okanaganrd.blogspot.ca/2013/09/millet-is-new-oatmeal.html
Cupcakes are the easiest potluck dessert, and most people don’t get to eat enough homemade cake these days!
I never thought of this before! How long do you think the millet would keep (i.e. could I make this the night before since I don’t have 40 min in the morning)?
I saw on smitten kitchen’s website that you can put a little bit of raw millet in baked goods before baking to give breads, muffins, cookies etc a more interesting texture. I’ve done it several times for banana bread and love it! I think she recommends 1/4 cup for a loaf of banana bread.
Definitely can do that!
My favourtite potluck item are dips! Spinach, roasted red pepper, hummus…. These all make vegetables easier to eat!
Also smoked salmon… However I don’t think there is a vegetarian/vegan alternative.
chopped almonds, dates, and a little orange rind rolled into little balls and dipped in dark chocolate
Millet… ah that brings back memories. The summer after my sophomore year in college (about 1990), instead of going back to my parents’ house I shared a house with my boyfriend and a few other couples. I was out of work due to knee surgery and so the others paid my share of the rent in exchange for cooking for everyone, and since most of the gang were vegetarians we kept a vegetarian table. Millet, even organic, was dirt cheap from the bulk bins at the local health-food store because demand for it was very low – it was cheaper than rice or oatmeal so we ate a LOT of millet! The most popular things were a casserole of millet baked with tomatoes, garlic, and cheese (vegans could use something like Daiya), and a baked rice pudding with millet (millet is naturally slightly sweet tasting so it is well suited to that). Toasting it until lightly browned in a dry skillet before cooking gives it a lovely nutty flavor but be sure to use lowish heat because it can pop like popcorn and go everywhere!
As far as sweets for potlucks go, what I bring tends to be determined these days by the dominant food allergies of the group attending (sigh…). I usually default to gluten-, soy-, peanut- and refined-sugar-free nowadays, nut-free if anyone has severe reactions because of potential cross-contamination – your rice crispy treats tend to go over really well (I like One Degree Organics’ sprouted brown rice-crisp cereal) especially with mini chocolate chips or dried wild blueberries. If nuts are an issue I use Sunbutter. If I know I definitely do not have to worry about nut allergies, a big tray with a selection of different flavors of the Fudge Babies/Larabars is fun. I portion them with a little scoop like a melon baller so they’re balls maybe 3/4″ across and call them “fruit truffles”. I make my life easier by processing a lot of nuts into a coarse meal consistency beforehand and dumping it into a big bowl (usually a mixture of whatever nuts I have on hand: walnuts, Brazil nuts – most of us need the selenium – hazelnuts, supplemented with almond meal and cashew meal from Trader Joe’s) and using that for the nut part, instead of doing up each batch individually from square one. I grind the fruit portion and add nut meal until the consistency is right, dump the resulting “dough” in a bowl, cover and label it, then I roll them all at once. Disposable vinyl gloves make this a much more pleasant task! Some flavors get additional nuts that are a bit more coarsely chopped and usually toasted, and I usually roll the ball in the chopped nuts: like blueberry-lemon generally gets pecans, banana balls (Trader Joe’s “Just Bananas, Flattened” are the bomb for those) get walnuts or macadamias, apricot balls (usually with orange-flower water or rosewater – think Middle Eastern food) get chopped pistachios. A local cake decorating store has candy papers in different colors, and I use the colors to color-code the flavors; I make a little placard to put next to the tray that shows what color holds what flavor, and the ingredients for each (with all the food allergies out there now, it’s just polite to disclose the ingredients). It sounds like a massive time suck but done assembly-line style actually takes less time than making a pie from scratch, and when the balls are small people can take half a dozen flavors and not look (or feel) like they’re massively oinking out. LOL And of course you know how well they store, they could be made two weeks ahead of time and stored tightly sealed in the refrigerator (the papers tend to wilt so just mark your containers with the different flavors, then drop the truffles into the papers as you’re making up the tray(s) to take to the party… side hint, hit up a florist shop for some of that fancy patterned foil they use for covering plant pots and use that to cover yard-sale cookie sheets. Tah-dah, “fancy” serving trays you won’t worry about losing!).
Cupcakes baked in mini muffin tins would be fun too – maybe mini strawberry-shortcake cupcakes: a white or yellow cake cupcake scooped out with a melon baller and filled with your vegan whipped cream, with a whole hulled strawberry stuck point-up right in the middle. (Make a trifle with the scooped-out cake bits.) Fruit-filled summer rolls (the kind in the rice-paper wrapper) have been making the rounds of Pinterest and various blogs, and since it’s getting hot those would be a nice fresh-tasting sweet, as would crisp little tartlets made from baking wonton wrappers in mini muffin tins, filled with a pastry cream and finely-chopped fruit almost like an all-fruit salsa, perhaps with a drizzle of white chocolate or sprinkle of toasted coconut (especially if your pastry cream is based on coconut milk) – all the components could be made ahead and then just bang them together at the last minute so they don’t get soggy. I like things that are pre-portioned for potlucks and buffets because serving utensils get all mucky and often cross-contaminated, and things run out because some people take a big portion, and I also like for those portions to be small so that one can try a whole bunch of things. And finger food is just plain fun. 😀
Thanks for all the suggestions!