Simple Uses for Sorghum

 

When you have a large crop of sorghum from the garden or farmstand, you don't have time to casually include it in complicated recipes or to frantically figure out how to use it up before it goes bad without getting sick of it.  You want to make the most of your harvest and to actually enjoy it.

Here at Plant to Plate, we like to keep things simple!  Here are some of my favorite ways to use or preserve sorghum, also known as jowar:

The uses below refer to sorghum seeds (grains) unless otherwise indicated.

• Simmer it to cook it similarly to rice or quinoa.

• Make an Interesting Hot Cereal with cooked sorghum by adding a sauce or nut butter, a sweetener, and fruit or other produce.  Learn how to make an Interesting Hot Cereal in this article.

• Use it as a substitute for quinoa, amaranth, or rice.

• Pop it.  You can pop sorghum in a skillet or in a popcorn maker.

• Make energy balls with cooked or puffed sorghum along with your mix-ins of choice.  These could be ingredients like turmeric and other herbs, cacao nibs, dried dates and other dried fruits, hazelnuts, almonds, peanuts, sunflower seeds, pepitas, and other nuts and seeds.

• Toss it with chickpeas and a cayenne-based hot sauce.

• Toss it with potatoes, bell peppers, and ginger or turmeric.

• Toss it with avocados, strawberries, and cilantro.

• Use cooked sorghum as Furniture in an Interesting Salad.  (Wondering why I capitalized those letters?  Read more about Interesting Salads here!)

• Make a Simple Salad.  with cooked sorghum, cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, and any mint.
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• Add it to other salads and sides.

• Add it to soups and stews.

• Add the whole plant to broths.

• Make gnocchi with sorghum flour, potatoes, eggs, and salt.

• Make a tea.  Sorghum seeds (grains) are best decocted, while sorghum stalks can work in either an infusion or a decoction.

• Make a tincture.  An herb:solvent weight ratio of 1:5 at 40% alcohol is suggested for a sorghum tincture.

• Dry it whole to save it for later.

• Dry and powder it to make sorghum flour.

• Freeze it for later use.

Further Reading

Growing sorghum?  Check out these quick facts like its best growing conditions, companion plants, and expected yields.

Sorghum is also featured in these articles:

• Quick Facts: Growing Sorghum
• The Interesting Hot Cereal: How to Make Your Hot Grains More Fun

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