How to Sprout Raw Buckwheat

This post is about sprouting buckwheat. Gasp! A paleo blog talking about sprouting  a pseudo-grain?? Who does this girl think she is??

The truth is, the tolerability and potential  benefits of sprouted, gluten-free grains for those without a serious gluten allergy (not sensitive to cross contamination and reactivity) has been discussed at length on the internet so I’m not going to go into it here.  (I see no reason to add my two cents to an already well-discussed topic.) This article is simply a description of how to sprout buckwheat if you have done your research and have decided to make this addition to your diet.

Personally, I got to the point of healing my gut enough that I could eat buckwheat occasionally in the form of sprouted, fermented, buckwheat pancakes or something fun like that but since I got accidentally gluten-ed a couple weeks ago, it’s definitely going to be a while before I can enjoy that again.   But hey, I have plenty of other delicious paleo foods to eat.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup raw buckwheat grouts
2 cups of water

Steps:

1. Place the raw buckwheat grouts and the water into a mixing bowl so that the buckwheat is entirely covered.

2. Let soak for 20 minutes.

3. Place the buckwheat into a strainer and drain entirely. Rinse really well, it’s going to have this slippery stuff all over it.

4. Once you’ve rinsed it really well, place the buckwheat along with the strainer inside an empty mixing bowl and cover.

5. For the next 24-36 hours, rinse the buckwheat inside the strainer every 10-12 hours or so. You definitely don’t want it to dry out or it won’t sprout.

6. After 24-36 hours, you’ll start to see little adorable sprouts starting to appear. It’s entirely ready when most of the buckwheat grouts have sprouted.

7. Now you can cook it according to the directions on the box. I threw mine in with twice the water as the amount of buckwheat, added about a 1/2 tsp of Redmond Real Salt and a big ‘o pat of butter, and let it simmer for about 15 minutes.  Here’s what mine turned our looking like (and was delicious!):