A wheat berry is the seed of any species of wheat. If you buy a product labeled “wheat berries” in our local U.S. stores, it is likely the berry of common wheat, unless it is otherwise specified. All wheat berries are whole grains, as they include the bran, germ, and endosperm.

About wheat

Many species of wheat make up the genus Triticum. The most widely grown is common wheat, T. aestivum. Hard winter wheats are planted in the autumn; flours made from winter wheat have a lot of gluten and are used to make bread flour for yeast bread. Spring wheats, in contrast, are “soft”, and have less gluten. They are blended with winter wheat to make all purpose flour, or used alone for cake flour. Durum is the hardest wheat, and it is usually planted in the spring in the US. Durum wheat is used in making pasta. Whole wheat flour is made from the entire wheat berry, while other flours are made from only parts of the wheat berry.

So far I have discussed freekeh, farro, cracked wheat, and bulgur. I need a quick review, so here goes! Freekeh is made from green durum wheat, and farro from a species of wheat that includes spelt, einkorn, and emmer. Both can be found as full berries. Different treatments such as parboiling, roasting, and cracking or grinding lead to different commercial products: I had cracked freekeh and whole farro. Bulgur and cracked wheat are made either from durum wheat or from a mixture of several different species of wheat – on the internet, one website claims bulgur is an ancient grain. Freekeh and farro are definitely ancient grains. All of the above grains are whole wheat products.

Wheat berries are the same as wheat “groats”. The term “groats” is more common when describing oat products.

Wheat berries

Wheat berries can be cooked and used much like farro, freekeh, bulgur, and cracked wheat. But in the past, I bought them solely for making sprouts for bread.

Around the 1970s-80s, “Sprouted Wheat Bread” was popular in local stores. Me the bread making nut wanted to make my own sprouted wheat bread. I came across a recipe in a Bon Appetite magazine calling for milk, margarine, yeast, molasses, honey, ginger, gluten flour, whole wheat flour, white flour, and wheat berry sprouts. I adapted the recipe and made it my own, making changes over the years as I went from hand-kneaded bread to mixer-kneaded bread to breadmaker-kneaded bread. Here is a link to the sprouted wheat bread entry in an old blog that I wrote in 1999.

Sprouts can be made from just about any whole seed. You simply soak the seeds in water overnight, drain them, then water them daily and wait several days for them to sprout fully. Sprouts were very popular in the 1970s and 80s, especially alfalfa sprouts (Alfalfas Market in Boulder was named for them). A year or so ago, I decided I wanted to make sprouts again, so I searched local stores. Store after store – but no sprouting seeds! Even at Sprouts Market! I checked the produce sections for prepared, packaged sprouts and even those were sometimes hard to find.

After a frustrating search, I finally found both seeds and sprouting jars at the Vitamin Cottage store. (If I was wiser, I would have just searched online, since they are readily available there.) The Vitamin Cottage carries a wide variety of sprouting seeds and jars for sprouting. I bought alfalfa, mung bean, clover, sandwich mix, and wheat berry sprouting seeds.

Below is a photo of the package of wheat berry sprouting seeds. Note that the label specifies the wheat as Triticum aestivum.

Last week, I found wheat berries sold in bulk at our local Whole Foods. The bin was labeled “hard winter red wheat berries”. They cost a few dollars for a pound (454 grams). Note that the wheat berries sold specifically for sprouting cost $2.69 for 50 grams!

Here are the bulk-purchased hard winter red wheat berries:

Compared to medium grain brown rice:

Here are sprouted wheat berries. They are kind of good “as is”, but are better in breads. (I sprouted these wheat berries from the berries I bought in a bulk-bin.)

Nutrition

1/4 cup of uncooked hard winter red wheat berries has 157 calories, 6 grams fiber, 6 grams protein, some calcium, and about 8% of daily iron needs. Source: Nutrition Value website.

Wheat berries have a glycemic index value of 41. Source: Glycemic Index (GI) Guidelines for a Plant-based Diet.

Wheat berries are a whole grain wheat product.

Cooking

Wheat berries take a long time to cook. Most sources say to simmer 60-90 minutes. Use 1 cup dry berries to 3 cups water.

Using a pressure cooker, I found online that they should be done in 15 minutes. That sounds better to me! I have a good electric pressure cooker.

The pressure cooked worked, but I goofed and set the cooker to “low pressure” and 30 minutes was barely enough time for the wheat berries to be done. I meant to use the “high pressure” setting! Next time I will do it this way:

• put 1 cup wheat berries in the pressure cooker and toast them
• add 3 cups water and a little salt
• set pressure cooker to “high pressure” and set the timer for 15 minutes
• quick release the pressure
• if they are not done, cook some more!

I liked these! They are as nutty tasting as they look. Crunchy and full of flavor. But tastes differ, and my husband didn’t like them much at all when I used them as a substitute for rice. He called them “rubbery”.

Note that the wheat berries I cooked are hard winter red wheat berries. I haven’t tried any other types of common wheat berries yet.

Recipes

Wheat berries can be used as a cereal, in salads, in grain bowls like tabbouleh, as a substitute for rice or pasta, and in breads. I think they would be great added to soups or added in small amounts to salads to provide a bit of crunch and flavor. Mixing with other grains might coax reluctant eaters into enjoying them. And as I discussed ad nauseum in the sections above, sprouted wheat berries can be used in breads.

Since wheat berries take so long to cook, it might be a good idea to cook a big batch of wheat berries and store them frozen in small portions. That way, you can pull a few out of the freezer and add them to a recipe in a flash!

Here are some recipes I might like to try:

• Wheat Berry Salad from Food Network has wheat berries, walnuts, dried cherries, celery, parsley, green onions, olive oil, and lemon.
• Zesty Wheat Berry-Black Bean Chili uses canned chipotle peppers to make the chili hot. (Eating Well.)
• Creamy Wheat Berry Hot Cereal combines frozen wheat berries with oatmeal, milk, brown sugar, cinnamon, raisins, and toasted almonds for a breakfast treat. (Eating Well.)
• Cherry, Chicken, and Pecan Wheat Berry Salad includes fresh cherries, cooked chicken, and goat cheese. (Cooking Light.)
• Smoked Salmon-Wheat Berry Salad with Caper-Yogurt Dressing (the title says it all!). (Cooking Light.)

Cracked Wheat

In Turkey, we had several meals that included a delicious grain called “cracked wheat”. These cooked grains were big and chewy. When we got home, I bought a package of cracked wheat at a Middle Eastern store, and on the package, under “cracked wheat”, is printed “coarse burghul #3”. From my bulgur post, I knew that burghul is an alternative spelling of bulgur. How does cracked wheat differ from bulgur, or does it differ?

The package of cracked wheat that I purchased is sold under the brand “Ziyad”. They have a website – here is the link to cracked wheat #3. On the web site it says the wheat is parboiled and then dried.

Whole Grain Goodness states that cracked wheat is made from whole wheat grains that have been cracked or ground into smaller pieces, and it is similar to bulgur but is not usually precooked (parboiled). “Many people use cracked wheat as a base, like couscous, serving vegetables or meats alongside it. It can also be used in grain pilafs and multi-grain bread, pancakes, and other grain dishes”.

WiseGeek states that cracked wheat is made from whole wheat kernels that are cracked into smaller pieces. They further state that cracked wheat differs from bulgur in that it is not steamed and toasted before cracking. “Because cracked wheat is made from whole wheat berries, it carries a great deal of nutrition and fiber since it includes the fiber and nutrient rich outer bran and germ of the wheat. For this reason, it is often added to healthy diets, especially those eaten by people who are concerned about heart health.”

According to Wikipedia, accessed 7/2018, cracked wheat is crushed wheat grain that has not been parboiled. On the Wikipedia bulgur entry, they spelled the non-parboiled form “burghol”. But when I search today for “burghol” on the web, nothing comes up.

My conclusion is that the division between bulgur and cracked wheat is blurry. Assume that products called “cracked wheat” may or may not be parboiled – check the package if you are curious. My guess is that “cracked wheat” is used for coarser grinds. When we visited Turkey, the cracked wheat we were served was definitely a coarse grind, like the #3 product I bought here in the US.

The take-home lesson is that both cracked wheat and bulgur both taste wheat-y and nutty and in my opinion, great. The coarser bulgurs/cracked wheats will be marked #3 or #4. Check the package to see how long to cook it. Then, enjoy.

Here is cracked wheat, uncooked:

Here is cracked wheat compared to medium grain brown rice:

Nutrition

1/4 cup dry cracked wheat has 140 calories, 5 grams fiber, 5 grams protein, some calcium, and an appreciable amount of iron. (Source: Ziyad brands package.) That’s almost exactly like bulgur – only the fiber amount is different.

Cracked wheat, like bulgur, is a whole grain wheat product.

Online sources report the glycemic index of cracked wheat as 46-53, making cracked wheat a medium GI food. (Anything under 55 is pretty good for a grain.)

A good reference for GI of bulgur and cracked wheat: Diet and Fitness Today.

Cooking

My package of cracked wheat only gave instructions for a recipe, not basic cooking instructions. So, I just put it in boiling water and checked it: I found it took 20 minutes of simmering to become tender and soak up all the water.

Cooked cracked wheat:

Recipes

In Turkey, cracked wheat was often cooked with onions and tomatoes. The recipe on the package of Ziyad Cracked Wheat that I purchased in a local Middle Eastern store, the cracked wheat is soaked in water and then sauted with onions and garlic in olive oil; bell pepper, water or stock, and a little tomato paste are added; the mixture simmered until the cracked wheat is tender.

Epicurious offers a recipe for a yeast bread. Cracked Wheat Top-Knots call for medium bulgur (“also called cracked wheat”). The bulgur is soaked in hot water before it is added to the yeast dough.

Several sites suggest serving cracked wheat as a breakfast cereal, especially with nuts.

Garlic and Zest’s Mediterranean Cracked Wheat Salad is made with kalamata olives, peperoncinis, radishes, tomatoes, and garbanzos.

Spiced Cracked Wheat and Lentils for Grown-Ups from Food Network is made with jalapenos, turmeric, tomatoes, paprika, ground coriander, cinnamon, and cilantro.

Honey Cracked Wheat bread is another good cracked wheat recipe. It’s in one of my own posts: The Bakery, New and Improved Recipes, Zojirushi America Corporation. In that post I briefly discussed cracked wheat.

Bulgur

Bulgur is a wheat product, made either from durum wheat or from a mixture of several different species of wheat. It is sometimes spelled burghul, burghul, or bhulghur. Bulgur is classified as a “whole grain” because it contains the endosperm, germ, and bran. It is one of the “ancient grains” – grains haven’t been selectively bred and have changed little for thousands of years.

I don’t think burghol is bulgur, but I’ll get to that in a later post when I study cracked wheat.

To make bulgur, hulled wheat kernels, called groats, are cracked and parboiled (steamed), then milled into different grinds, from fine particles to coarse particles (number 1 is fine, number 4 is coarse). I’ve found bulgur in many local stores, both in bulk and packaged. I think the packages I’ve found do not denote the grind, but I am going to pay more attention next time I look for it.

Bulgur is common in Middle Eastern cuisines. It can be used as a cereal, in soups, and as a substitute for rice or pasta. Cooked, it is fluffier than farro (an intact grain) or freekeh (a cracked grain), both of which are not parboiled.

Looking through my own cookbooks, I find many that have bulgur recipes. None before the 1970s, though, and mostly in “natural food” type cookbooks. It became popular with the hippie vegetarian movement because it is a whole grain with a good amount of protein.

Uncooked bulgur:

Bulgur compared to medium grain brown rice:

Nutrition

1/4 cup dry bulgur has 140 calories, 7 grams fiber, 5 grams protein, some calcium and especially iron. (Source: Bob’s Red Mill package.)

Online sources report the glycemic index of bulgur as from 46-48, making bulgur a medium GI food. (Anything under 55 is pretty good for a grain.)

Ordinary Vegan likes bulgur for people on a diet. They compared it to quinoa: cooked bulgur has half the calories per cup as does cooked quinoa, so calorie-counting dieters get to eat more of it. If you eat the same number of calories of quinoa and bulgur, you get the same amount of protein. They also claim that bulgur has more fiber than quinoa, and that bulgur has a resistant starch that is especially good for keeping us feeling full.

Food Network’s Healthy Eats has a page on “meet this grain” for another discussion of the nutrition and uses of bulgur.

Nutrition Value has more nutritional information for bulgur. Nutrition Value is a great database. It gives vitamins, minerals, proteins and amino acids, fats and fatty acids, carbohydrate values, and more miscellaneous information for many foods. You can search by a specific food, mineral, macronutrient, or amino acid, or search by food category. (It does not give the glycemic index.) I also like WolfAlph as a resource for nutrition values.

Cooking

I added 1/2 teaspoon salt per 1 cup dry grain.

I wasn’t sure how long to cook the bulgur, since I did not have the package, so I had to look it up online. As it cooked, I checked it after about 10 minutes and decided it was too dry, so I added more water. I did this one more time during the cooking. I checked for doneness at 20 minutes, and stopped cooking at 22 minutes. Draining was not necessary. I did leave it covered, off burner, for about 5 minutes before opening the pan and letting the cooked bulgur cool.

1 cup dry cooked to 4 cups cooked! It really is amazing. You can eat a larger volume for the same amount of calories as some of the other grains.

I did not know the coarseness, or “grind”, of my bulgur, since I had bought it in bulk or taken it out of the package to store in another container. Different grinds (they are 1-4 with 1 being the finest) might have different cooking times, so if you buy bulgur in a package, consult the package for cooking time.

Cooked bulgur:

Recipes

Probably the most famous bulgur dish is tabbouleh, a salad made of bulgur, tomatoes, onion, mint, parsley, olive oil, and lemon. I make variations of this type of grain dish a lot, using different types of grains – it makes a great lunch bowl, and a great side salad for those who like grainy dishes. Sometimes I add nuts or spinach or kale or cooked chicken or fish. But almost always, I add feta cheese, if I have some around! And at least one fresh herb – it seems to me to be a necessity for this dish.

Bulgur, cooked, can be added to bread dough.

Food Network’s Healthy Eats has recipes for:

Eating Well collection (includes Asian seasoned bulgur).

Epicurious has a recipe for bulgur with herbs that includes toasted almonds.

Any sort of chopped vegetable, including cucumbers, and garbanzo beans are good additions to bulgur bowls.

Freekeh

Blue Apron introduced me to freekeh. I tried Blue Apron off and on for a year or so. Why? Just to learn some new things, I guess. And it was so cute and convenient to get little packages of herbs and sometimes unusual and hard to find ingredients. Plus, they sent just the right amount of food for two people, so no leftovers. Last year, when I learned that “freekeh” was in the next week’s Blue Apron shipment, I got all excited. Something new! And I remember the meal being pretty good. Why did I end up stopping the Blue Apron service? Too much packaging to recycle.

Freekeh, like farro, is an “ancient grain”. Freekeh is sometimes spelled frikeh or called farik. It is a wheat – green durum wheat. The “green” denotes that it is picked early. Traditionally, freekeh is first roasted, and then cracked or crushed to make it into smaller pieces. So freekeh is still a whole grain with nothing removed, but it is in small pieces. It is also sold “uncracked”, but I haven’t tried that type yet. I found cracked freekeh, Bob’s Red Mill brand, in a local store. The package claims freekeh to be “the traditional grain of the Middle East”, and states that it is still used in Middle Eastern and northern African cuisines. For more information, I like Two Healthy Kitchens discussion of the history of freekeh.

Below is my photo of uncooked, cracked freekeh. The size of the pieces varies quite a bit. Note how some of the pieces are slightly green.

For a size comparison, freekeh next to medium brown rice:

Taste

Freekeh has a nutty taste – the roasting probably brings out this flavor. It’s also pleasantly chewy.

Nutrition

1/4 cup dry has 170 calories, 8 g fiber, 7 g protein, some calcium, iron, magnesium, and a lot of manganese.

Glycemic Index: 43 if whole, 55 if cracked.

Two Healthy Kitchens has links to several sites with more information on the nutrition of freekeh.

Cooking

1 cup dry yields about 3 cups cooked. I added a bit of salt to the cooking water. When I cooked it here in Colorado (about 5500 in altitude), it was cooked perfectly when I used the method above. After the 20 minutes cooking and the 5 minutes standing, there was barely any water left to drain off.

Cooked freekeh:

Recipes

Freekeh is pretty much like farro in usage: as a substitute for rice and in hot and cold salads. I don’t think it would be good in soups, at least not the cracked freekeh. Since cracked freekeh is already roasted, toasting it is not really necessary to bring out the flavor.

The Bob’s Red Mill package suggests serving freekeh as a salad with garbanzo beans, bell peppers, tomatoes, dressed with an herb pesto made from mint, lemon zest and juice, pine nuts, and olive oil. (Lemon Mint Freekeh Salad, more freekeh recipes on the same site.)

Using my own ingredients, I tried Blue Apron’s “Orange Chicken Thighs with Cherry Salsa and Green Wheat Freekeh Salad“. The warm freekeh salad is made by adding cooked freekeh, arugula, and almonds to the orange sauce used to cook the chicken. I liked it a lot, but hubby wasn’t as enthusiastic.

Online recipes:

• Kale Chopped Salad with Berries and Freekeh from Two Healthy Kitchens.
• Blue Apron Cookbook and search for “freekeh” for a lot of recipes.
• New York Times: Freekeh, Chickpea and Herb Salad
• Almond and Parsley Pesto with Asparagus and Freekeh on What’s Gaby Cooking.
• Triple-Herb Freekeh on Food Network.
  
• Naturally Ella has a good collection of freekeh recipes.
• Tabbouleh Salad with Freekeh and Feta on Rachel Cooks.