Little Millet Porridge
Replicating a tiny millet experiment, inspired by Mom.
Mom (Lalita Shankar) posted a detailed write-up about Millets and how they can be healthier replacements for grains like wheat and rice. In fact she wrote two whole posts about them:
Those recipes were just too interesting and intriguing. So much so, that when I saw a packet of little millets in my local Indian grocery store I just grabbed it (paid for it) and ran back home to experiment 🧪!!!
Little millets were particularly enticing when I spotted them because of the porridge recipe that Mom described that we can make with them. You see, the allure of an easy-to-make breakfast is worth the effort for me. Also, I was not sure how this would go, but I was just too curious.
So, here’s what I did…
1. Overnight Soak
I put two measures of ⅓ cup of little millets in a big bowl: so about two-thirds of a cup, of little millets. Why two-thirds you might ask … because ⅓ seemed too less. I then added about 4 times the water … so about 2⅔ cups of water.
This was literally the last thing I did before going to sleep. I was pretty excited to know that breakfast would be easy to make the next morning. It was a good night sleep 😴🛏🌒
2. Drain and Microwave
Next day in the morning🌅 I drained the water. But before draining the water, I noticed that the millets had not soaked up the water to blow up in size. I was worried that I had done something wrong and called Mom right away. Upon hearing my concern she laughed and told me not to worry 😅
At this point, I drained the water, and added in a fresh batch of water (again, 4 parts for every part of little millets). I was going to prepare the porridge in the microwave (turns out that you can do this in a pressure cooker as well; I was lazy). Note to self: a little extra water might not hurt.
I set the microwave timer for 20 minutes. At the 10 minute mark I paused the microwave and added in a few tea spoons of milk and restarted the remaining 10 minutes of the cook. This is how it looked after the 20 minutes were up:
It looked awesome! I could not contain my excitement and started jumping around(!) — this experiment was working out after all. My wife was amused.
I got the porridge out of the microwave and added about half a cup of milk and mixed the porridge well. Et voilà!
3. Add Honey.
Finally, I took a tumbler in which I wanted to enjoy this porridge, and added in some honey — in layers if I may say so: one layer of porridge, one layer of honey, followed by porridge, and then one last layer of honey. And I was off to my desk ready to enjoy my porridge as I started answering the morrning batch of work emails.
It was a super easy breakfast to make — I still have some left over in the fridge, which I will be having tomorrow. The porridge itself was light and breezy. I enjoyed this with a cup of espresso. It was a good start to the day. 😋😁
