How to Cook Buckwheat in Water So It's Fluffy

Step-by-step recipe

1. Familiar buckwheat, sold as green or toasted groats, is considered a diet food. It's used for soups, porridges and side dishes, and it's even brewed as a drink. Cooking buckwheat is easy and quick.
2. To cook buckwheat, take the brown groats: they've been toasted and are the most common kind in stores. Good-quality groats contain no debris, but it doesn't hurt to check. And if necessary, even rinse them with water. To improve the flavor of the finished dish, you can briefly toast the buckwheat in a dry hot skillet until it smells pleasantly nutty.
3. It's best to cook buckwheat in a small heavy-bottomed pot of up to 2.5 liters. For the cooked buckwheat to be fluffy, use twice as much water by volume: 1 cup of groats to 2 cups of water.
4. Bring 2 cups of water to a boil. Pour 1 cup of buckwheat into the boiling water. Add salt, a little less than 0.5 teaspoon. Stir so it doesn't burn: it often sticks to the bottom of the pot. As the water comes back to a boil, skim off the foam with a slotted spoon. Once the water boils, reduce the heat and cook for 6-8 minutes. For fluffy porridge or a side dish, turn the heat down as low as it goes, cover the pot with a lid and let the buckwheat literally steam until fully cooked. Be sure to keep an eye on it: buckwheat burns easily.
5. This is the simplest version of fluffy buckwheat. If the groats aren't overcooked, they won't turn mushy and will be tender, perfect as a side dish or for a main course with, say, braised meat: you can just mix them and serve. Before cooking buckwheat, it's worth thinking about what you'll eat it with.
6. Buckwheat contains no gluten, so it's tricky to make a sticky porridge with whole grains; for that, cracked groats are used and cooked until very soft. But as with most grains, the usual cooking ratio is one part groats to two parts water. To keep buckwheat from turning mushy and sticking together, it's best to stick to this ratio in general.
7. If the groats have absorbed all the water but aren't cooked through, add a pat of butter rather than water. And let the buckwheat stand for 10 minutes over very low heat or off the heat altogether. It will finish cooking. If there's liquid left, you can try draining it and keeping the buckwheat covered to steam.
8. To preserve the nutritional benefits of buckwheat, keep cooking to a minimum. After adding the groats to boiling water, cook over medium-low heat and then turn the heat way down, so the groats cook through completely without falling apart or burning.
9. Buckwheat cooked in water is a dish in its own right. You can add butter, fried vegetables, meat or fish. Even mixing the fluffy buckwheat with good canned stewed meat gives you an excellent main course. By the way, you don't have to boil green, untoasted buckwheat. It turns out much better when soaked in boiling water or steamed.