Whole Grains Stuffing

When I say whole grains stuffing, I don't mean made-with-whole-wheat-bread stuffing, I truly mean whole grains.  There is a biointensive garden at the farm, which yields interesting grains like wheat (maybe not very interesting), millet, sorghum, and amaranth. I was waiting all year to be able to make something with those grains and I finally had the chance when I was chef during my last week at the farm!
*Biointensive gardens are an interesting technique for growing a lot of food on a small amount of space.  Check out the official website to learn more.*

Anyway, I was really excited about being able to cook with these grains and when I made a Thanksgiving-style meal for lunch one day, I used some of the sorghum and wheat to create a new stuffing recipe.  It ended up being, in many ways, similar to the traditional stuffing I grew up eating, but I really like the addition of the chewy texture of wheat in this one!


I cooked the wheat grains (wheat berries) and the sorghum in their own separate pots.  I covered each grain with water and then simmered them until the grains were no longer hard, but chewy.  This took around 30 minutes. Near the end, I added the onions to the wheat berries for about five minutes so they were cooked to the point of being soft.

In a 18"x15" pan, I mixed together the following:
3 c. bread, cubed
3 c. sorghum, cooked
4 c. wheat berries, cooked
5 onions, chopped and cooked with the wheat berries
about 1 c. water (enough to moisten all of the ingredients) from cooking the wheat berries and onions
6 eggs
3 Tbs. sage
salt and pepper, to taste

Once it was all mixed together, I baked it at 325F for 2 hours, then turned the heat down to 425F for 20 minutes.
*Note that I was making stuffing on a large scale, for 30 people, so normal people might want to cut this recipe to make it into a reasonable amount!

In the "Thanksgiving" feast, we also ate the rest of the grasshoppers that I had been saving in the freezer since the summer, when Anthony was catching them for me daily.  Mmmmm.

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