Whole Wheat
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Wash the wheat thoroughly and remove any floating debris.
Drain the wheat well and pick out any foreign matter.
Cook
Place the wheat in an inner boiler with 5 to 6 times its volume of boiling water.
Fill the outer boiler with boiling water and cook for 6 to 8 hours until the wheat kernels have opened like popped corn.
Serve
For breakfast, cook the wheat the day before and reheat it like cracked wheat.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
What each ingredient does
- White whole wheat
- Forms the cereal itself; its starch softens and gelatinizes during long, gentle cooking to give a tender grain.
- Boiling water
- Provides the moisture that hydrates the kernels and carries heat into them as they cook.
The step that matters
Cooking the wheat in the double boiler for 6 to 8 hours. The wheat needs enough water and sustained gentle heat for the starch to gelatinize fully. If the outer boiler runs dry or heat is too fast, the kernels can scorch or cook unevenly, so keep the outer pot filled with boiling water throughout.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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