2

Am considering Ragi as a substitute to rice to avoid the spike in blood sugar each time I eat rice. Purchased 1kg of Ragi seeds and found that every single recipe makes use of Ragi flour. Even friends in India say they are unaware of recipes that directly use the seeds.

Is it really necessary to grind/mill millets? On searching, I found one lemon millet rice recipe, but I'm not sure if it can be applied to Ragi, since Wikipedia says the bran is bound tightly to the endosperm. Am hoping it would be possible to cook it like in the lemon millet rice recipe at least if the Ragi seeds are sprouted?

John David
  • 231
  • 2
  • 8

3 Answers3

2

Millet in general is perfectly cookable as a whole grain. It functions pretty interchangeably with other grains and pseudograins, except where you need very specific qualities (e.g. you probably won't be able to make sushi out of it because you can't get the right amount of stickiness).

I don't know about Ragi specifically, as opposed to the generic food sold as just "millet", but I don't see any reason for it to behave differently. In the worst case, just give it a try - there is little reason to think it could fail.

rumtscho
  • 134,346
  • 44
  • 300
  • 545
1

Rumtscho is right. There is a recipe called Ragi Risotto that doesn't require grinding it to a flour.
Ingredients

1.5 cups ragi
3 cups water
2 onions, minced
1 carrot, minced
1 celery, minced
1.5 cups fresh green peas
0.5 cup unsalted butter
0.5 cup grated Parmesan
0.5 cup olive oil
Salt to taste

Method:

Rinse the ragi under hot water. Sauté the vegetables in oil and add three cups of hot water and place it together with the ragi in a pot.
Set the pot to medium high heat and when it starts boiling, turn the heat down to the lowest level and cover the pot.
Add minced onion, peas and butter to the ragi (but don’t stir too much), as well as the cheese and salt. Leave the ragi to cook on the lowest flame until ragi has absorbed all the water.

Source: https://www.thechefpost.com/ragi-risotto/

Julia
  • 307
  • 3
  • 12
1

There are a lot of millets and each of them have different cooking time if using whole. Few millets also need to be soaked in hot water and few hours before cooking to reduce the cooking time.

If Ragi is to be considered, it can be used whole as well as in flour form, depending on the recipe. If you need to use whole for making upma, biryani, risotto or salad just soak and boil it open or pressure cook it. Ragi won't take much time and can be cooked in an open vessel.

Also the recipe you shared, any millet can be used there. But millets have their specific taste, so you need to try it!

Happy Cooking!!

aashii
  • 721
  • 4
  • 7
  • Thanks Aashii. How much time is "much time"? Could you point us to any recipes? I'm pleasantly surprised it can be used for upma and biryani. – Julia Feb 08 '20 at 14:16
  • 1
    Sorghum and pearl millets need to be soaked in hot water for 6-7 hours and then pressure cook it to 5-6 whistles. These 2 millets take more time as compared to other millets. Ragi or Little millet need less time nad no need to be soaked earlier. And yes, they are very versatile and can be used to prepare various recipes. They have numerous health benefits so became much popular nowadays. – aashii Feb 10 '20 at 04:49
  • Thanks, but how much time is "less time"? I'm assuming you are speaking of cooking it in a pressure cooker and basing your time measurements on how many whistles the cooker emits. This would be putting the burner on full flame until the first whistle and then changing to low flame and waiting for the remaining 5 whistles. Correct? For ragi it would be a fewer number of whistles (but how many)? – Julia Feb 17 '20 at 05:59