Wheat Berries Breakfast Bowl

I’ve been wanting to write about wheat berries for weeks.  After trying a delicious wheat berry salad at Whole Foods, I was intrigued by their chewy, nutty flavor and I’ve been thinking about making them ever since.

What is a wheat berry?   Well, for one, it’s a whole grain and contains the entire seed of the plant.  This means wheat berries have all the good stuff intact – the bran, germ, and endosperm – which house the grain’s natural vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, fiber, and protein.  All wheat products are actually made from wheat berries, including white and whole-wheat flour.

With September being Whole Grains Month I decided to to cook up a batch and see what I could create with them.   They’re pretty easy to prepare; you just buy in bulk and cook them as you would rice.  To make mine, I boiled 2 cups of wheat berries plus 1 teaspoon of salt in about 6 cups of water, for about an hour.  Yes, it takes an hour to cook up these puppies!   However, once they’re cooked, you can them use them in a variety of ways.

 cooked wheat berries

My first creation:  the breakfast bowl.  I didn’t use a recipe.  I just went with what I had in my fridge.  I mixed about a 1/2 cup of the cooked berries with some pineapple Chobani yogurt, added a drizzle of honey, and chowed down.   It was really good!  I would advise, however, to wait until the wheat berries have cooled to mix with the yogurt.  I mixed the yogurt into the warm berries and that was kind of yuk.

my first bowl

Later, I had bowl number two with the cooled wheat berries and added sliced almonds and a spoonful of craisins.  Even better.

my second bowl

Tonight I will try a savory bowl of wheat berries.  Perhaps this Mediterranean Wheatberry Salad with Lentils and Chickpeas from Foodblogga?  Looks delish.

I encourage you to try wheat berries yourself.   Whole grains are an important part of a healthy diet.   If you’re not used to eating them, the Whole Grains Council has a great list of “baby steps” for adding them into your diet as part of a their Whole Grains Stampede Sweepstakes.