One Thursday, during the early years of our marriage, my husband and I discussed the upcoming Shabbat dinner menu. “Can you think of an interesting side dish,” he asked. “I am tired of rice and potatoes.” A quick perusal of my only cookbook at the time left us disappointed. Rice and potatoes was all it had to offer.
Since then, I have discovered a whole array of interesting side dishes, but my hands-down favorite is what many of our ancestor ate back in Europe – buckwheat or kasha.
Rich in B vitamins and omega-3 fatty acids, buckwheat has been purported to offer numerous health benefits, such as lowering blood glucose levels, reducing cholesterol, and acting as a prebiotic.
Buckwheat is very simple to make and lends itself to a wide variety of uses as a side dish, breakfast alternative, and a casserole base. You can also cook add it to a chicken or meat stew to get a satisfying all-in-one-pot meal.
Below are several suggestions for incorporating buckwheat into your diet.
Cooking Buckwheat
- Rinse buckwheat well.
- Place into a pot and roast for 4-5 minutes, stirring frequently.
- For each cup of buckwheat, add 2 cups boiling water and salt to taste. Cover, reduce heat to low and simmer for 15 minutes or until all liquid is absorbed.
- Remove from heat, fluff with a fork and add 1 tablespoon of oil. Serve.
Breakfast Buckwheat Cereal
As a kid, warm buckwheat with milk and sugar was one of my favorite comfort foods. Try it for breakfast.
Here are two more great buckwheat recipes:
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In the old country (USA) my mother used to make kasha all the time. Her mother brought it over from the old old country (Ukraine). When I came to Israel it was difficult to find in the stores. In the 90’s it became easier to find. That made me happy. We have it very often and many in the family prefer it to rice.
My mother also made kasha, especially kasha varnishkes. Unfortunately I’m allergic.
@Risa, same story exactly in our family as well.
@Hannah, Are you allergic to buckwheat? I didn’t know it could trigger allergies. It is not even a grain.
Three cheers for buckwheat! It’s a great substitute for rice and potatoes and, as Mr. B doesn’t eat cereal for breakfast like all normal Americans, I make him kasha (the boiled buckwheat you describe, with milk, like cereal) for breakfast almost every day. His nostalgia for detskiy sadik (kindergarten in the ussr) is insurmountable.
They never fed us buckwheat at my detski sadik. But I agree. There are certain tastes and smells that take me right back to my childhood.
[...] I was serving buckwheat for dinner tonight, my super-picky 10-year-old had a novel idea. “Mom,” she said, “I’ve [...]