Amaranth

I'm not a vegetarian, and I'm miles away from being vegan, but sometimes I find something to try that I'm fairly certain only the rawest of raw food vegans have ever eaten. 

OK, well, maybe I'm generalizing. To be fair, though, I'd never heard of Amaranth before except in some of the raw food, vegan blogs I've come across.  For all I know, everyone has a big container of it next to their Triscuits and I'm the last person on earth to find out about it.   DON'T JUDGE ME!

At any rate, during the afore mentioned trip to Earth Fare, I saw that the bulk containers had just been filled, and I saw the Amaranth and decided to try it!  I was a little scared, because trying stuff from the bulk bins that you've never had before is hit or miss at best.  It's the worst when you get a bag of some unidentifiable grain or beans or whatever and find out you hate it.  Then you have to fight the guilt of throwing away perfectly good food.   I got a very small scoop of the stuff, just in case it was disgusting, and brought it home.

 Raw Amaranth Seeds

Amaranth is tiny.  It's a seed rather than a grain, and if the websites I read about it are correct it's super nutritious, full of protein, and used to be part of an ancient Aztec harvest celebration where there were games, music and human sacrifice!  Who wouldn't love to try a grain that led people to ripping out hearts?!!

I had to look up how to cook with the stuff, because you don't tend to just come across Amaranth as an ingredient in your more mainstream cook books!  You can use it in all kinds of ways.  The most common way I found was making it like some kind of porridge, but I'll be honest, I was too scared to try it that way first.  It looks like cream of wheat or grits, and I just couldn't face the slimy looking texture.  Plus...it takes a long time to cook like that, and I was too hungry to wait!  The most interesting way I found to use it is to pop it like popcorn!

It's the tiniest, cutest popcorn ever!

I never knew anything else popped like popcorn, and this sounded too fun not to try.  Another great thing is that you only need a little bit to make a lot of the popped stuff, so I took about half of what I had and got to popping!

It literally only takes a few seconds to pop this stuff, and you have to have a super hot pan with a cover, preferably a glass cover so you can keep watch.   I learned the thing about the cover the hard way, because the one time I opened the top before the seeds had stopped popping, they went everywhere.  You put a few tablespoons in the pan at a time, and shake the pan while they pop.  It's like the old-school popcorn method, I guess.   You have to be very careful not to burn it.  Once it stops popping, you have to pour it into another container, or the heat from the pot will burn it.  It took less than 5 minutes to pop all of the seeds I'd set aside, and I soon had about 2/3 cup of the popped Amaranth.  

It didn't smell...good.  I mean, it wasn't a bad, gagging smell or anything, but it was a little like burnt grass.  I was afraid I'd actually burnt the seeds, but when I tasted them, I was pleasantly surprised!  It had an awesome texture and tasted really good!  I think my brain wanted it to taste more like actual popcorn than it really did, but it's just different enough to be interesting! 

My first thought was to salt it and eat it like tiny popcorn, but that would have taken me all day.  I found out that you can add nuts and fruit to it and eat it like cereal, which is what I did!  I really liked it, even though it tasted kind of odd.  I don't know if it was actually odd-tasting, or if I just kept on expecting it to taste like actual popcorn.  It was a bit like unsweetened Sugar Smacks, if that makes even a lick of sense, but I added some Splenda (I know, I know) strawberries and almonds, and poured milk over the whole mess.  It was awesome!

I don't know if I'd want to go to the trouble of popping the seeds every morning, but it definitely was a good, and surprisingly filling, breakfast.  The smell is still kind of lingering through the house, which isn't so great, but I'm hoping that will go away before this afternoon.  Eventually, I'll get brave enough to make the porridge, but I can't imagine liking it better that way.  Seriously, you should try this stuff!  An entire ancient civilization of human sacrificing Indians (ahem - indigenous peoples) can't be wrong!  :)

WEBSITE- No specific website, but online recipes abound!

SERVING SIZE: 1/4 dry, uncooked, but it bulks up like crazy no matter what way you cook it.
CALORIES: 186
CARBS: 32
TASTE: Very good!  If popped, it's nutty, popcorny, and like unsweetened Sugar Smacks. The texture is also fun!  Cooked the other way...I'm not sure.  I'm still too scared to try!  :)