DIGEST: Amaranth – The Pseudo-Cereal My Gut Loves

An amaranth porridge recipe 🥣 + check out what I'm eating this week

Have you heard of amaranth? This grain has made it from Mesoamerica across the Atlantic (and Pacific) to become a growing 'superfood' star. With its nutty, malted flavour and sand-coloured seeds, it's worth the hype—when cooked right!

Amaranth is a pseudo-cereal harvested for over 8000 years for their edible starchy seed and are not in the same family as traditional cereals like oats or wheat.

Amaranth plant is native to indigenous America, and it was honoured by Aztecs and Incas for having supernatural powers. Today, it is grown in China, India, Southeast Asia, west Africa and the Caribbean. There’s even species grown in the UK.

Amaranth is another option for those on a gluten-free diet. It's also great for those on a plant-based diet looking to increase their protein intake from plants. One cup of cooked amaranth contains 9.3g of protein; in comparison, quinoa has 8g, and brown rice has 5.03g. 

Don't expect to readily find it on supermarket shelves or in every health food store, although I have picked up some at Holland and Barrett (a UK health food store chain). To get more for my money, I head to Amazon to buy 1kg of the Whole Foods Earth brand, which keeps me going for a month or two. 

Porridge is the only way I eat amaranth

I first used amaranth for porridge when I received Erbology's Amaranth flour. I suspected it could work how fine cornmeal or ground millet works when making a smooth porridge. I was right—it thickens up and soaks up a lot of water, making it slightly gelatinous, which makes it an excellent gut health food. 

And a note on smooth stools: I include ground flaxseeds as they also contain mucilage-soluble fibre, which forms a gel when combined with water to help keep things soft and moving well along the colon. 

I've substituted quinoa with amaranth as a base for a stew or curry. However, I missed the fluffy texture that makes quinoa a suitable alternative to rice.

Hopefully, in the future, I’ll experiment with other ways to use amaranth, i.e. sprouting.

PREPARATION