Pop goes the…sorghum?

Even with my good-sized cookbook collection and the entire EYB online recipe database at my fingertips, occasionally I run out of inspiration for the somewhat embarrassing number of grains that reside in my pantry. This is especially true for some of the more obscure items – there are not many options for purple barley, for instance. That’s why I immediately clicked on the link from epicurious that promised a fantastic new use for nearly every grain in my possession: popping them like popcorn. 

The technique seemed quite simple: heat up a saucepan until water immediately sizzled and evaporated, toss in a small amount of the grain of your choice, shake the pan to prevent burning, and you would be rewarded with popped or puffed farro, barley, amaranth, quinoa, or whatever you fancied. What seemed straightforward was decidedly more complicated than it appeared, however. 

Author Sam Worley did note that there was a learning curve to the technique. If your pan was not adequately hot, the grains wouldn’t pop and would just burn instead. And he was right. However, for two of the three grains I tried, no amount of heat seemed to be adequate for popping vs. burning. 

I measured the heat of my pan with an infrared thermometer in addition to using the water trick. The water hissed an evaporated at all temperatures over 210 degrees F, but the grains did nothing but scorch at that level of heat. I tried again at 250 degrees with no luck. However, at 275 degrees, I had some luck with the purple barley, which – much to my surprise – popped immediately.

The effect was not as dramatic as popcorn’s transformation from tiny kernel to fluffy, craggy orb, as the barley looked more split than ‘popped’. However, 275 degress and even more – up to 345 degrees, which is where I stopped experimenting because the pan’s handle was too hot to hold even with a potholder – was still not enough for the brown rice or farro, however. They merely burned, despite vigorous pan shaking. One or two grains popped but the ratio was about 50:1 scorched to popped, definitely not worth the effort. 

You might wonder, as I did, if using the microwave would work like it does for popcorn. Pro tip: it doesn’t – unless your goal is to carry a flaming paper bag out of your house while wearing pajamas, throwing it on the sidewalk, grabbing the garden hose to douse the fire, and hoping you can clean up the mess before your spouse discovers it or your neighbors spy it from their living room window. Not that I know anything about that. 

Photo of Popped sorghum from Food52 by Maria Speck