Essential Whole Grains for Your Prepper Pantry - From Ancient Grains to Gluten Free Grains

today i want to share with you the essential whole grains for your prepper pantry and we're going to go over ancient whole grains modern whole grains and gluten-free grains [Music] hi sweet friends i'm mary and welcome to mary's nest where i teach traditional cooking skills for making nutrient-dense foods like bone broth ferments sourdough and more so if you enjoy learning about those things consider subscribing to my channel and don't forget to click on the little notification bell below that'll let you know every time i upload a new video today i want to go over the wide variety of whole grains that you can keep in your extended pantry and when i say extended pantry that's often also referred to as the prepper pantry and if you're new to the concept of an extended pantry or the prepper pantry basically what it is it's part of the four corners pantry system and what is the four corners pantry system well basically it breaks the pantry into four areas one is your working pantry what you access every day then your refrigerator then your freezer and then the fourth part is your extended pantry or your prepper pantry it usually contains all non-perishable foods that you use to restock your working pantry and the nice thing about having an extended pantry is that you can stock it little by little over time as you find what you need on a regular basis or what you find on sale that you also need on a regular basis and so that way when there's bad weather or illness or job loss and you might not be able to get out to the grocery store or maybe money is a little tight you can use your extended pantry to basically restock your working pantry and it's the idea of stocking the extended pantry and the working pantry in your fridge in your freezer is all new to you i wanted to let you know that i have a free 36 page download and it's called the essential four corners pantry list and i'll be sure to put a link to that in the description below underneath this video so that you can download that so first of all why would you want to store whole grains in your prepper pantry and the reason is that whole grains store very well and have a long extended shelf life and when i say whole grain that's exactly what i mean the actual whole grain that has not been cut up has not been flaked has not been ground into flour it's just the actual whole grain and not only do whole grains store well they're also very versatile you can certainly grind them into flour which we'll talk about in a minute but you can also prepare them in many different ways you can make them into a porridge and eat them for breakfast you can make them into a side dish like rice you can also cook them up and toss them into salads so they're very versatile and can add a lot of variety because of their versatility to your menu and if you want to turn any of your whole grains into flour to be used for baking it's become a lot easier to do and a lot more affordable to do than it used to be you can certainly use electric grain grinders which have become very affordable i use the mock mill which i'll share with you a little bit more about later but you can also use a manual grain grinder that i've also had and had for years and then thirdly a lot of the high-speed blenders today like the vitamix and possibly others also allow you to grind grain so you have a lot of options for grinding grain into flour and then you have very fresh flour and you know you always have your grain stored in your prepper or extended pantry and you don't have to worry about always having to buy flour well let's go over all the grains and we'll start with the ancient grains now the first ancient grain we're going to talk about is einkorn now the name sounds a little funny it has nothing to do with corn but einkorn is believed to be the most ancient grain it's what's referred to as a diploid meaning that it only has two sets of chromosomes and it's also very low in gluten so although people who are gluten intolerant wouldn't be using this if people are just slightly gluten sensitive they have found that often eating bread made with ein corn is a little more agreeable to them now i want to briefly mention i have another video which i'll link to in the i cards and in the description below where i talk about how to store all these whole grains in your prepper pantry and i go into a lot of detail we'll touch on the basics here but if you really want a lot of detail about the best way to store whole grains definitely be sure to check out that video so having lower gluten in ein corn is one of the reasons why people are attracted to this ancient grain it's also very high in vitamins and minerals more so than the modern grains the modern wheat specifically and einkorn specifically is known for being very high in a substance called an excuse my pronunciation i'm not sure if it's lutein or lutein but it's excellent for the eyes and you'll even notice when you bake with ein corn and you grind it into flour it will have of somewhat yellow appearance and speaking of grinding this or any grain for that matter into flour if you're worried that you're only going to then have whole grain flour and sometimes you would like a little bit of a lighter flour that's more like an all-purpose flower or a bread flower that's had a lot of the bran and the germ removed you can do that very easily all that's involved is using a sifter to sift out the bran and the germ and get and you can just sift out as much or as little as you want and never feel bad about doing that because our ancestors going back to the middle ages and before often would sift out at least about a quarter of the bran in the germ to make their flour a little lighter so that it then made a slightly lighter bread that was more digestible and just more palatable and specifically speaking of ein corn i have another video where i show you how to grind it into flour and then how to sift it so that you do have an all-purpose basically an all-purpose iron corn flour and i'll be sure to link to that video as well next as we move up the ancient grain timeline is emmer now depending where you live you may also know this as faro and generally in the united states this is called emmer but i've noticed at grocery stores when this is packaged it's becoming more commonly referred to as faro now that can get a little confusing because einkorn emmer and what we're going to talk about next spelt are often all referred to as faro but a difference is made by adding on another word einkorn is generally called little faro or faro piccolo in italy next emmer is called medium faro or faro medio and then spelled will be called big faro or faro grande but the nice thing about whatever you call it faro or emmer this is a wonderful grain that cooks up beautifully as a side dish as a side dish faro can really replace any other grain you might be serving like a white rice or a brown rice and the nice thing about farro is that it's very rich in iron and magnesium two minerals that are always good for us and also once you cook it up and say we're going to use it as a side dish you can also use this in place of any type of grains that you might use in a salad so if you were making a tabouli say with a cracked wheat or a bulgur wheat instead you could try faro and it'd be delicious because it's got a chewy nutty flavor that is very delightful and now as we continue to move up the ancient grain timeline this is spelt and this is actually one of my favorite whole grains spelt is beautifully versatile you can use this in place of any recipe that calls for whole wheat flour plus you can cook this up just like emmer as well as ein corn and serve this as a side dish or anywhere else you might be using a grain all three of these are lovely you can put them in soups you can make them into porridges for cereal or as i said you can serve them as a side dish throw them into a salad they're all rich obviously in fiber because they're whole grains and each one brings different vitamins and minerals to the table so to speak spelt is very rich in magnesium phosphorus iron and niacin which is one of the b vitamins and scientists tell us that b vitamins are always very good for nourishing our nervous system so that's wonderful in a stressful world now each of these as we move up the ancient grain timeline have more and more gluten now they're all relatively lower in gluten obviously compared to modern day wheats but ein corn has the least gluten then the pharah or the emmer and then the spelt and i guess that's why i would say that spelt is my favorite because it is a very versatile grain in serving you know as a dish but it also makes a wonderful flower as i mentioned earlier for replacing whole wheat because it does have a little more gluten than these two it does bake up a better product but although einkorn does make a nice bread i generally recommend sifting out a little bit of the bran and the germ and maybe even adding a little bit of a modern wheat to it just to help give it a little lift now these three are generally the most common ancient grains that you'll hear about there are more and we're going to talk about that in a minute but when you're shopping you're going to look for eincorn emmer or spelt or it may be faro piccolo faro medio or faro grande or faro grano now spelt is getting easier to find i will see this at my grocery store as well as specialty stores and of course you can always find any of these online and when you're shopping for them you may just see them in their actual whole grain form or you may see them sold as sprouted they may say sprouted iron corn sprouted emmer or sprouted spelt and sometimes people like to buy their grains already sprouted because it does make them more digestible but you can soak and sprout grains yourself and it's very easy to do and there's very little time involved on your part and if that's something that you're interested in i have a video where i show you how to soak and sprout and then dry your grain and even take it one step further and turn it into sprouted flour and sprouted flour is used to make those types of breads that you may see at the grocery store under the name of ezekiel but keep in mind you don't need to just bake with sprouted flour to make your baked goods more digestible you can also make sourdough because souring grains or sprouting them will make them easier to digest and easier for us our bodies to assimilate the nutrients now these are all in the wheat family and we're going to talk about a variety of grains both in the wheat family and not in the wheat family but if you'd like to learn more about each of these ancient grains as well as the modern weeds that we'll talk about in a minute but if you'd like to learn more about them in greater detail i have a video which i will link to in the i cards if i run out of room in the i cards i'll definitely put everything in the description below but i have a very detailed video where i talk about each one of these in expanded detail that may be of interest to you and if you're wondering i'm not sure if i explained this before but if you're wondering why einkorn is referred to as piccolo and emma is referred to as meteo and the spelt is referred to rono or grande it's because of the size of the actual grain when you see einkorn up close it's very tiny and then when you move up the line up the ancient grain line the emmer is a little bigger and then the spelt is quite a healthy sized grain and something that is important to note especially when it comes to storing these grains in your extended pantry or your prepper pantry is that einkorn emmer and spelt are all hard grains and hard grains when stored properly either in a five gallon bucket that has a good airtight seal or in a mylar bag with oxygen absorbers whatever the case may be in as i said i have a video where i go over all of the storage options in much greater detail but the bottom line is when stored properly hard grains can last in an extended pantry for up to 20 years and depending on what resource you use to determine the shelf life of whole grains some resources will say that whole grains can go in an extended pantry or can last in an extended pantry stored properly for 25 years or even longer some people will even recommend that these be considered forever foods meaning they have basically an unlimited shelf life but i highly recommend that you look at different sources and i will be sure to explain all of this in detail in my blog post that'll correspond with this video and all you have to do is open the description under this video and you'll see blog post if you click on that link it'll take you over to my website same name as my youtube channel mary's nest and i'll link some resources there the state utah state university is a wonderful resource for learning about what foods you can store on an extended basis and they go through all of the various foods and their shelf lives so know that at a minimum there's a pretty good chance that you can keep your whole grains fresh if stored properly for at least 20 years and just to clarify that's hard grains we're going to talk about soft grains but hard grains can have an extended shelf life of about 20 years the next ancient grain i want to talk about is called kamut and kamut may also be referred to as khorasan wheat now kamut is believed to have been cultivated around the time of king tut in the area of what's known as the fertile crescent and i believe they even may have found some in king tut's tomb and that's why it's associated with that period in history kamut like all of the grains that we're going to talk about today can be prepared in a multiple of ways it can be ground into flour it can be cooked up as a porridge or as a side dish so it's very versatile and what's nice about kamood is that it has a rich buttery buttery flavor so if you're looking for something where maybe you're cutting back a little on your butter which i don't know why you know me i love my butter but if you are you might really enjoy camut because it does have a very buttery flavor the other important thing about kamut is that it's rich in selenium and selenium is a mineral that is hard for us to get in the modern diet so kamut or coruscan wheat is a wonderful wheat to keep a wonderful whole grain to keep in your extended pantry and something interesting to note about kamut or coruscan wheat is that agronomist people who study crops of which my father-in-law was one tells us that this is actually potentially a descendant so to speak of emmer which we talked about before and also under this emmer or faro media umbrella is durum wheat something that you may have heard of when people talk about pasta although durham wheat whole grain durum is not something that i stock it's certainly something you can consider keeping in your extended pantry however what i find is better to keep on hand is actually ground semolina now what is semolina so this is a bag of semolina i have now granted semolina is not going to have the same shelf life as a whole grain but durum whole grain or whole grain durum can be hard to find and even durum flour is not something that i normally see at my grocery store or even at a specialty store but the reason why i like to keep semolina on hand is what semolina is is when you have whole grain durum and it's ground into a flower and then it's sifted where they're sifting out the bran and the germ there's kind of this third product so now you have your sifted durum flower you have durum bran and you have a durham germ and then this sort of other product that's out there is what's known as semolina and what it is is the durham middlings now years ago people used to say that the middlings were basically what they sweeped off the floor but i think my son even as a little boy used to like sing a song about it but today how semolina is made is as as the word describes it's the middlings and what middlings are is a combination of things you have a little bit of the durham flower you have a little bit of the bran and you have a little bit of the germ not as much as just the brand not as much as just the germ and not as much as just the flower so what's great about semolina it brings to the table all of the different nutrients some that are in the brands some that are in the germ and some that are in the endosperm from the flower and what's great about it is that it's very high in protein durum wheat is very high in protein and semolina the middlings is also high in protein so semolina is wonderful to keep on hand if you like to make homemade pasta because your best pasta is going to be made with durum semolina because it's that high protein content that's going to really help the pasta keep its shape and give it that nice al dente chew that we love when pasta is cooked appropriately also when it comes to working with any of these flowers adding some a little bit of semolina to your dough batter creates a nice chewy crust so it works wonderful to maybe add about a quarter's worth of semolina when you're making a pizza dough so under that umbrella of emmer if you keep some of this lovely kamut or coruscant wheat on hand and then maybe a little semolina from the durum wheat you're all set now if you'd like to learn a lot more about camut if it's something that you really want to give serious consideration to adding to your extended pantry i have a video where the whole video is just about commode and again i'll be sure to link to that in the i cards of our room but definitely in the video description below and you can learn more than you'll ever want to know about cabood the next whole grain i want to talk to you about is rye and rye has a very distinctive appearance it almost has the grain or berries as they're often referred to rye berries have almost sort of a bluish gray tint to them and it's important to note that rye is a soft grain and soft grains generally are considered when stored properly to have an extended shelf life of about eight years now some sources may stretch that out and say 10 years or a little longer but the general rule of thumb is when stored properly you can keep rye grain in your extended pantry and keep it fresh for up to about eight years now rye is a wonderful grain for the extended pantry because rye is very rich in vitamin e rye is a wonderful grain to keep in your extended pantry for a number of reasons first of all it is an ancient grain but it is an ancient grain that's high in gluten so you need to keep that in mind rye whole grain is very rich in vitamin e and a whole host of antioxidants and scientists tell us that people who eat a diet rich in rye are often very healthy so definitely something that we want to think about incorporating into our diet if you tolerate gluten and also just if you enjoy rye bread as i do having rye berries and mixing them either with a little bread flour or a little of one of the other whole grain flours but having the majority of the flour be rye can create a delicious rye bread and another reason for keeping rye on hand in both your extended and your working pantry is that when you grind this into flour rye flour works really well for getting a sourdough starter going and the reason is rye has a starch in it that the yeast and the good bacteria really like to eat and so they gobble it up and so you start getting a nice bubbling activity in your starter quicker than with other flowers now don't worry if you say oh i don't really like the taste of rye or i don't like rye bread or whatever the case may be you can get your starter going with rye especially a good move to make if you've been struggling getting your sourdough started going but you can get it started going with rye flour and then you can transition it to any flour you want once it's nice and bubbly and really strong and healthy you can start feeding it all purpose flour bread flour whole wheat flour whatever you want to feed it and then over time you have a starter that's no longer a rye starter but you used the rye flour to get it going and if you want to learn how to make a sourdough starter using rye flour i have a very detailed video where i walk you through step by step day by day getting your starter going and i'll be sure to link to that video if that's something that you're interested in i also have a sourdough starter video where i show you how to just get a sourdough starter going with all-purpose flour and i'll be sure to include that as well but if you do get some rye grain or you get some rye flour i think you'll be very pleased with how happy you are at how quickly your sourdough starter gets going now one other grain that i want to mention here which is kind of a new kid on the block so to speak is something that's called and i believe it's pronounced triticale and it is a combination of durham wheat which we talked before which we talked about before which is sort of under that emmer umbrella and rye and so it's an interesting combination and it makes an interesting grain that then is used in baking now although triticale can be used in baking it's not as consistent in its results as wheat is but it can also be cooked up and eaten as a porridge or as a grain side dish in different you know preparations like that however it can also be a little difficult to find it's more commonly grown and possibly found in europe than it is here in the united states where i live and you may also hear about it being used very commonly to feed livestock so that may be another reason why it is a little difficult to find so it's not something that i keep in my extended pantry or my prepper pantry but it's something that i did want you to know about but when it comes to rye i think rye is a little easier to find i know some of you have shared with me that finding rye berries or rye flour is a little more difficult but hopefully it'll become more common as people are getting more interested in having and keeping a variety of whole grains in their pantries but i highly recommend keeping some rye on hand and giving it a try for making your sourdough starter if you struggled with that at all next i want to talk a little bit about modern grains and specifically modern whole wheat grains now like rye being called rye berries you'll often hear a whole wheat grain referred to as wheat berries now something i want to mention when it comes to modern day wheat you will hear a lot of terms you'll hear red hard wheat which we'll talk about first you'll hear about white hard wheat you'll also hear about soft white wheat you may often hear the term winter wheat or spring wheat and it can all get a little overwhelming but what you need to focus on is if you're dealing with hard wheat red or white wheat or soft weed worrying about winter wheat and spring wheat really just has to do with the times when it's grown and planted and so on and so forth and it can just become a little mind-boggling especially just for the home baker so i don't worry too much about focusing on that but we're going to talk about the details of hard wheat soft wheat and what the difference between red and white wheat is now when you hear the terminology hard red wheat that's generally what's milled into what we know as whole wheat flour at the grocery store it's a modern wheat and it's been hybridized and it's very commonly used to make whole wheat cakes whole wheat cookies whole wheat breads whenever you see the term whole wheat most likely they've used a hard red wheat now the nice thing about keeping hard red wheat the whole grain in your extended pantry is that you can mill it yourself and keep it very fresh because once whole grain flours are milled into flour they don't have a very long shelf life because the milling process releases the oils that are in whole grains and those oils can cause your whole grain your whole grain flour to spoil and generally resources will tell us that once milled whole grain flowers may have a shelf life anywhere from six months maybe to a year but you will find that if you take out some whole grain flour that's quite a few years old and you smell it it's going to smell rancid so the nice thing about keeping the whole grain on hand is that number one it's got a nice long shelf life when you're ready to mill it you say you want to make it into a flower then you have a nice fresh whole grain flour plus if you want to sift out a little bran and germ you can certainly do that to then use that flour to bake with and make a slightly lighter baked good because something you want to keep in mind is that with any whole grain the brand primarily contains something known as phytic acid now phytic acid has a good side and not such a good side it is an antioxidant but it can also be difficult to digest in the sense that when it goes through your system it can bind with some minerals that you may need and then it will take them out of your body but i have a whole another video you're not surprised on where i talk about phytic acid in wheat in greater detail and i'll be sure to link to that below but what's important to know is that when you soak and sour your your flour in essence like making a sourdough bread or you soak and sprout your flour as in making a sprouted bread flour something like the you know store-bought ezekiel breads you're helping to decrease some of the phytic acid now you won't get rid of all of it but maybe that's not necessarily a bad thing because it does have a good side but maybe you get the antioxidant benefit from it but uh and it's in essence stripping less nutrients out of your body because you've decreased it and sometimes as you'll see in the video that i share where i talk about all this in greater detail that sometimes removing some vitamins and minerals from your system is not necessarily a bad thing because it can prevent the buildup of certain vitamins and minerals especially iron which some people tend to hold on to iron and if you hold on to too much and are not able to eliminate it scientists tell us it can cause problems for our heart so you know there's this fine balance you know of knowing how to prepare foods properly and i really think when we look to our ancestors and we look to how they prepared things and then they survived and and we're their descendants so i think that's a very uh good thing to look to how did they prepare these breads and so they in many cases were making sourdough breads and then there were different times of the year when they may be eating unleavened bread that was neither soured or sprouted so maybe in the spring was most common in the spring to eat unleavened bread and maybe that was a time when they knew after the long cold winter of maybe eating a lot of meat and their bodies being very rich in iron they knew that maybe they needed to and also to nature in the seasons really didn't give them much options in terms of what their diet what was available to them seasonally but maybe they knew they felt better if they ate unleavened bread in the spring but in any event those of you who know me know that it's very easy for me to go down rabbit trails when i talk about this i find it so fascinating but getting back to just keeping the whole grain if you decide you like to keep whole wheat in its whole grain form in your extended pantry keep in mind that you can grind it and have nice fresh flour and then you can even sift it a little if you want to sift out the bran and the germ unlike the whole wheat that you would buy from the grocery store which is basically going to have all the brand in german tact and it's ground generally in such a fine way that it's difficult for you to sift out any of the bran and the germ but when you grind it at home there are often different settings that you can set your grain grinder to that allow you then to create a grind so to speak that allows you to sift out some of the bran and the germ now i don't keep a lot of the modern wheats in my extended pantry and it's rare that i really keep red hard wheat on hand but i know many of you have told me that you like the modern weeds and you like the way that they bake up so i wanted to go through the whole selection so to speak that you may commonly see and be able to commonly buy so moving from the red hard wheat the next modern wheat that i want to share with you is white hard wheat and even though it has the terminology or the name in it white it is a whole grain and it is very nutritious not unlike red hard wheat it's simply a different hybrid and it's slightly lighter in color than red hard wheat and it bakes up a slightly lighter bread and you may even see breads at your grocery store that will say white whole wheat 100 whole wheat and they look like a white sandwich bread and that's because they're using white wheat whole grain or white wheat whole grain flour that does bake up something much lighter than red hard wheat but as opposed to the hard red wheat i like to keep some hard white wheat on hand and the reason is if i want a wheat a modern day wheat to mix with my ein corn or my emmer or my spelt i find that the white whole wheat helps the rise of using when i make bread using those ancient grains because these are these modern day wheats are higher in gluten and so that'll help rise your bread a little better and not unlike the ancient grains you can certainly cook these into making a porridge that you've soaked overnight and cooked like an oatmeal or you can cook this up and use it as a side dish or something that you add to soups it's just less common that you'll hear about doing that i think the most common thing you hear about when it comes to the more modern wheats is when a hard red wheat is taken and turned into a cracked wheat or a bulgur wheat and then used to make you know a salad like tabbouleh but generally i use my hard white wheat to grind into flour and to mix with some of my ancient grains and i want to mention that hard red wheat and hard white wheat as the names imply are hard grains so these have a very long shelf life so kept in their whole grain form and stored properly you can keep these in your extended pantry as i shared earlier regarding the other hard grains is that they can be stored 20 plus 25 years plus and maybe even longer now in addition to hard white wheat hard white wheat whole grain you're also going to hear about soft white wheat and soft white wheat is lower in gluten than hard white wheat and as the name implies this is a soft wheat so this is a soft grain that has a shorter shelf life than your hard grains but the nice thing about soft white wheat is that the gluten is lower and a little more delicate and so it makes a very nice flower for when making pastries so soft white weed can be very nice to keep in your extended pantry and grind into flour and either use it completely as is or sift out a little bit of the bran and germ and then use this when you want to make pastries where using one of the ancient grains or one of the traditional hard wheats like the hard white or the hard red may not bake up as delightfully light a pastry that you're looking for and another reason for keeping soft white wheat in your pantry is if you want to make your own all-purpose flour that will be similar to what you might buy at the grocery store all-purpose flour is a combination of soft wheat and hard wheat that's why it's all purpose because it's got that sort of protein level that's kind of right in the middle that can kind of work for anything so if you want to make your own all-purpose flour that you can use to make bread but that you can also use to make pastries cakes so on and so forth if you've got some whole grain soft white wheat you can grind that mix that with either some hard white wheat or some hard red hard red wheat or one of the ancient grains whatever the case may be and then sift out the bran and the germ as much as you can and have something that's as close to an all-purpose flour as what you might otherwise buy so so far we've talked about the ancient grains and the modern grains most of which are all in the wheat family and then of course we have the rye but another grain that i want to talk about which is also very old and was often found in the tombs of pharaohs in egypt so scientists feel that this also is an ancient grain and was cultivated very early in our history in our human history and that's barley now barley is a soft grain so again as we've learned soft grains you know will have a extended shelf life of maybe about eight possibly ten years and again stored properly now barley has a very tough outer hull and often part of that hull needs to be removed and in removing it they're going to be having to remove some of the brand in the factory when they're hulling it and so that does decrease the fiber content of the barley somewhat so if you can find barley that's been like partially hulled that's going to be a little better for you than barley that has the terminology that it's been pearled or completely dehulled but sometimes to find barley that has a little bit more of the bran intact you have to look at specialty stores or online and in terms of the continuum of cooking time a pearled barley is still going to have fiber in it and it's going to cook the fastest one that's sort of been partially hulled is going to take a little longer and barley that's not been held is going to take very long to cook it's not something that i really like keeping on hand but agronomists are working on all sorts of things when it comes to barley and i think you're going to be seeing if you're not already seeing different varieties at your grocery store there are even what they call like hollowless i'm pronouncing that correctly barleys that actually retain a lot of their nutrition yet don't have that really tough hull and so the cooking time is shorter but in any event whatever type of barley i could find to keep in my pantry i really like to have it and i use it in cooking as opposed to grinding it to make into flour but you can certainly grind barley and add a little barley flour to your bread and let me give you a little tip there if you take your br your barley say you buy the barley that has the hull intact and you soak it and you sprout it and then you dry it and then you grind it into flour what you have is barley malt and you'll often see that added as an ingredient to bread if you read the ingredients on a bread from the grocery store sometimes it'll be referred to and excuse me if i'm not pronouncing this correctly but a diastolic malt to something like that or diastolic powder that's basically barley malt it's just sprouted barley that's been turned into flour and adding a teaspoon up to maybe a tablespoon into your bread flour will help with the overall rise but generally what i like to do with barley is to cook it as a grain and serve it as a side dish not unlike i would rice or any of the other grains that we talked about earlier and nobody can turn down a beautiful beef and barley soup but i like to keep a lot of barley on hand and you cook it up in boiling water you drain it toss it with some butter and salt it's delicious and it makes a wonderful side dish and the other thing that i like to do if i'm doing a beef and barley soup is to cook my barley separately and then add it when i go to serve everyone the soup because what i find is that if i put the barley into my beef and barley soup it does tend to absorb a lot of the soup and then the next day if i have leftovers it's become very thick so i just want to share that little tip with you but if you make your barley separate and then go ahead and add it into the bowl and then pour your soup with your beef and your vegetables on top of the barley you'll have a beautiful beef and barley soup that also saves well when you store your barley and your soup separately for leftovers and you'll want to keep in mind though when it comes to barley barley does contain gluten and so far that's what we've been talking about we've been talking about the ancient grains the modern grains and some wheat rye barley these all contain gluten in one way or another the ancient grains a little less gluten the modern grains a little more gluten but overall they all contain gluten now what if you run a gluten-free household or even just a moderately gluten-free household and you keep some grains that have gluten but you also want to keep some gluten-free grains on hand what are some good options now the first gluten-free grain that i like to talk about because this is i think the easiest one to find and that's oats and specifically oat groats which is basically the whole grain oat now whole oats or what are known as oat groats are a soft grain so keep that in mind for your extended pantry you're looking at eight maybe a little longer in terms of years for shelf life and i want to stress that these are oat growths the whole grain oat can you keep steel cut oats which are chopped oat groats or can you keep flaked or rolled oats on hand certainly but you need to keep in mind that they're going to have a much shorter shelf life than if you keep the whole oat the whole oat groat now there is one caveat that i have to mention when it comes to oats being gluten free you want to make sure when you shop for your oats that they do say that they're guaranteed to be gluten free now you might be saying guaranteed to be gluten gluten free aren't oats naturally gluten free and you would be right yes oats are naturally gluten free however unfortunately some oat crops get contaminated by other nearby growing crops that then drop in essence a little gluten on them and so when they're growing and so you have to make sure that the oats you're buying are guaranteed to be gluten free if you need something to be guaranteed to be gluten-free and i think this has become very common and you will often see i see it on the bob's red mill brand they'll have their oats often the flake dots or the steel cut oats and it'll say guaranteed gluten-free or something along those lines and so i think that it's pretty easy to find now when it comes to oat groats i really like to use these to make oatmeal and i have a video where i show you how to do this to take these and toast them in the oven and then break them up a little bit in the blender and then soak them in a situated water water that has a little apple cider vinegar in it or you could use whey you know whatever you have on hand and then soak it overnight and then cook them in the morning it's going to be the most delicious oatmeal that you've ever had and i'll be sure to put the link to that in the description below but you can also do the same thing you can either cook these whole as it is or you can break them up a little so that you kind of have your own homemade steel cut oats and then you can cook this and serve this as a savory side dish you will be surprised at how delicious oat groats are you can cook these up toss them with a little butter and salt chop in some vegetables some green onions are very nice and they are delicious and if you've chopped them up so you can toast them you can follow the same procedure as you would making oatmeal but you'll toast them and then grind them up a little bit just so that they're all in the little bits looking a little more like steel cut oats and then cooking that soaking them overnight and then cooking them the next day drain them you cook them a little different than if you were making more of the thick oatmeal and then you drain them you cook them in more water and you get them into a boil and but you soak them overnight so they cook very quickly and then drain them and toss them as i said butter salt pepper some vegetables and they make a wonderful and nutritious side dish that's gluten free and the wonderful thing about oats is they are so rich in nutrients if you just go on the internet and you search you know what are what are oats or oat groats rich in you're going to get a long list of nutrients but what i think is very important about oats is that they're rich in magnesium which is always good to have because it's a good complement to the calcium to keep our bones strong but oats are also rich in copper and that's another mineral similar to selenium well it's different than selenium but similar in the sense that it can often be something that's difficult to get into our diets and having sufficient copper in our diets is important especially important to keeping your hair nice and thick then i think that many of us you know wish for that but i highly recommend eating oats because as i said they're just so rich in nutrients you really can't go wrong and you can eat them as a porridge as an oatmeal you can eat them as a savory dish you can add them to soups they're so versatile and you can always grind them up and make oat flour and use that in your baking in your gluten-free baking and another nice thing about oat groats is that if you like to make oat milk making oat milk with oat groats is going to prevent a lot of the problems associated with oat milk you're not going to have slime you're not going to have a lot of the other side effects that can develop with when you use the flaked oats or even the steel cut oats you're going to get your best results when you make oat milk with oat groats and another nice thing about oats you know when you're looking on the ancient grain or the grain continuum so to speak oats are an ancient grain they're these have been around a long time and it's the grains that have been around a long time that often are the ones that are the easiest for us to digest and the easiest for us to assimilate nutrients from so always keep that in mind now yes do they contain phytic acid which is you know as we shared it's got the good side and the bad side you know it can be an anti-nutrient but that's why we're going to soak it we're going to soak it overnight and you can even sprout oat groats and make sprouted oat flour if you want you know not unlike i show you in the video how to soak and sprout and and dry your grains that you soak and sprout and then turn them into flour if you want to do that but all of that aside the nice thing is the more sort of in essence tried and true and tested a grains aura the better i feel about incorporating them into my and my family's diet and so definitely think about oats whether you want gluten-free or not gluten-free you know regardless of what type of grains you incorporate you can never go wrong having oats in your extended pantry the next gluten-free grain i want to talk about is millet and millet is very cute because it's very very tiny it looks like a tiny little seed but this like oats is also an ancient grain this has been around a long time and you can just add this as is to your bread flour and give your breads a nice crunch there's a bread that i've had i think it's called seedlicious or something like that and it's got millet in it and sunflower seeds and assorted other nuts and seeds and it's just got a beautiful crunch but it's the millet that i really like that's in the bread because the milk just has a great crunch but you can grind this up and you can turn this into flour a nice gluten-free flour i know the italians have a cake my mother i don't know what the proper name of it is i don't have to ask my mom but she would always call it the angel cake and it was made with millet and i believe it might have maybe had a lot of egg whites maybe if some of you are familiar with the italian millet cake you can mention uh something about it in the comments below but because she said it was just as light as if it's an angel's wings flying or something like that it was cute but uh so you can turn this into a flower and use it to bake with you can also just cook this up it's a delicious grain and use this in place of rice and then you've got something that's a whole grain it's loaded with nutrition and it's gluten free and the nice thing about millet is that it's very rich in potassium which is a wonderful complement to sodium we often have a lot of sodium in our diets but sometimes we don't have enough of potassium and they really balance one another and scientists tell us that if you have sufficient potassium in your diet it's very good for your kidneys and your heart so definitely incorporating millet into your extended pantry and again you know i'm covering these as gluten-free but gluten-free or not i think having millet just as i feel having oats in your extended pantry is really a good idea because this they do make a wonderful addition to breads they make a wonderful side dish or a porridge you know a breakfast type porridge there's a lot you can do with millet and whenever you can find foods that are rich in potassium of often which our diets are somewhat low in is a smart idea to try to incorporate into your menus as much as possible and millet is considered a hard grain so you've got a nice long extended shelf life with this but unlike some of the other hard grains when you cook up millet it has a very soft texture that can be especially pleasant for children it doesn't have that chewy kind of no i wouldn't say tough but that chewy texture that other whole grains have when they're cooked up millet cooks up more like couscous or white rice it's really very pleasant and if you've never had it you know buy a small amount and try it out and see what you think cooking it as a as a side dish as a grain try it as a porridge try adding a little bit to your bread you know it's wonderful in bread and then as you get really adventurous and you may want to be making things that are gluten-free try it as a flower the next gluten-free grain i want to talk about is buckwheat and buckwheat is one of those grains that are in a family of grains called pseudo cereals and i'm actually using the term grain a little loosely here because technically the group of grains called pseudo cereals are actually seeds because they're not grown on grasses the way grains generally are but they're consumed as cereal grains hence the name pseudo cereals which not only includes buckwheat but also includes quinoa and amaranth buckwheat is very nutritious it's rich in so many vitamins but it's especially rich in antioxidants and a specific antioxidant known as i believe it's pronounced rootin r-u-t-i-n which scientists tell us is a very important antioxidant that we need to prevent disease and buckwheat is so versatile you can grind this into flour and you can use it to bake with it makes wonderful pancakes wonderful waffles things like that if you want you can also soak and sprout buckwheat if you wanted to make sprouted buckwheat flour you can also cook buckwheat as a porridge similar to oatmeal you can also serve this as a side dish and you can make it in a way in a dish that's called kasha which is very i believe very common in eastern europe so it's a very versatile grain seed a pseudo cereal that can serve so many purposes in your kitchen whether you're gluten free or not it's such a rich food and considered a hard grain or hard pseudo cereal hard seed so again this is going to have a long shelf life in your extended pantry so if you like and that's another thing if you like buckwheat i recommend that if you like it definitely you want to keep this in your extended pantry if you've never had buckwheat buy a small amount and try it out try making pancakes grinding some and making pancakes with the flour or making waffles with the flour or simply if you don't have the ability to grind it and you simply want to buy it whole try it look up a recipe for something like kasha or simply just cook it up and it's relatively easy to cook up and toss it with a little butter and salt and see if you like it for some people i will share that that buckwheat can be an acquired taste i like it but it is a little stronger than some of the other grains that we've talked about like the oatmeal and the millet which tend to have milder flavors buckwheat does have a little stronger flavor so try a small amount and if you like it i highly recommend because it is so nutritious keeping this in your extended pantry and making it part of your regular menu and something i want to stress as i shared this is gluten-free but i don't want you to get confused if you hear the name buck wheat and say oh is there wheat in it there is no wheat in buckwheat it is simply as i said a pseudo cereal that is gluten free now also included in that pseudo cereal family are quinoa and amaranth as i mentioned earlier i don't tend to stock amaranth in my pantry in my extended pantry or my working pantry because it's a little harder to find for me although i understand that it is becoming more common and that you may be seeing it at your grocery store so it's definitely something for you to keep your eyes open for if you're interested in it as a gluten-free grain and even if you're not because amaranth like quinoa like buckwheat are very nutritious quinoa in essence is a soft grain so unlike buckwheat it's going to have a shorter shelf life in that more of that 8 to 10 year range when stored properly and i just want to share something because this can become a little confusing when you're talking about grains and seeds if you look up in the dictionary for example you know what is a grain it'll say like a small hard seed something to that effect but what the difference is when you're talking about whole grains versus things like buckwheat and quinoa and amaranth as not really being in essence whole grains they sort of all fall under the umbrella of grains it's just that when we think of the typical grains like weed and rye and whatnot those are in essence cereal grasses they're growing off of grasses versus buckwheat and quinoa and amarath which tend to grow in different ways and are not grasses and so that's why they're called pseudo cereals so i hope that helps it can get a little confusing and something that's very unique about quinoa is that it contains all of the nine essential amino acids making it very high in protein and like buckwheat and some of the other grains we talked about today it's very rich in all kinds of nutrients and you can grind this and make this into a flour you can cook this up like a porridge you can serve this as a side dish you can pretty much do anything you want with quinoa and it's nice knowing that if you are going gluten free you've got something that's gluten free but also very rich in protein now what i've got here is the tri-color quinoa i've got black quinoa red quinoa and the white or the beige quinoa i like the tri-color because it looks nice when you cook it up and it also provides some variety but you generally can find these sold individually as well in whatever color you want the flavors are somewhat similar i tend to eat it like this i think i've had the beige or the white quinoa by itself but overall it's just a very tasty little grain and it cooks up nicely and you can toss this with you know butter and salt like i always say and just serve it as a side grain you can add some veggies to it and you can also grind it and i've seen a lot of people use quinoa flour to bake in to use in their gluten-free baking so definitely something to think about storing in your long-term or extended pantry and i think i shared that this is a soft grain so it's shelf life in your extended pantry will be around eight years or a little longer and although i don't store amaranth it is something that you may be interested in looking into if you are gluten-free it is very rich in a lot of micronutrients like manganese and can be very useful in the diet it's also interestingly enough it's rich in polyunsaturated oils but in their natural state that have not been like adulterated and damaged which is often the case which you may find on the shelf when you you know buy polyunsaturated oils at the grocery store so it's something to look into but because of some of those qualities amaranth is a little more delicate when it comes to being stored and generally what i would recommend is that if you want to keep amaranth really research you know especially its sites as i mentioned earlier like the utah state university i believe it is extension service and see what their thoughts are on storing amaranth i may be inclined to store that in the refrigerator if i did stock it now one item i want to mention that's that's gluten free but i know everyone has different feelings on stocking it or not because it can cause inflammation in some people and that's corn specifically dry corn that's made for storing and there are a variety of corns that you can store in your extended pantry if you choose to uh one is the corn that's used to make popcorn and that's basically you know corn once it's dried is a hard grain and the corn the variety of corn that's dried that we use to make popcorn is considered a forever food it's considered to like never have it like a really long extended shelf life so that's a nice thing to know if you enjoy popcorn and you want to store that and i'm talking about the plain dry corn not the microwave mixes that have all the butters and chemicals mixed in just plain dry corn that's ready to be used for popcorn that basically is considered a forever food and it's a wonderful uh item to have in your extended pantry if corn agrees with you then there are the other varieties of corn that you can grind and make uh corn flour or a corn meal depending on how fine or coarse you grind it and corn is gluten free and again like oats you need to be a little careful you need to make sure that it is guaranteeing that it's not been contaminated and that it is in fact gluten-free but it's wonderful to bake with and corn meal or corn flour can be baked with without adding any additional grains or too many eggs or whatever the case may be to give it the lift that you're looking for it can make a cornbread it can make the old-fashioned johnny cakes i have a video where i show you how to do that you know with the cornmeal and so there's a lot that you can do with corn uh once you grind it up you know you can make a corn grits you can make like a kind of like a porridge you know that you can eat for breakfast so if it agrees with you and it doesn't cause inflammatory problems storing dry corn in your extended pantry is a smart thing to do now are there some other grains that we've not covered like sorghum and tef definitely and i highly recommend that you research those if you're interested in them they're not ones that i tend to keep in my extended pantry and often i don't even see sorghum i occasionally will see teff here and there but it's not something that i buy and generally when i see sorghum it's usually in the form of syrup that makes a wonderful replacement for like a molasses or a honey or something like that now once you stock all this whole grain in your extended pantry you're going to need some way to grind it into flour if that's how you want to use it as flour to bake bread now this is my mock mill grain grinder that i mentioned earlier this is an electric grain grinder and i did a lot of research before i purchased this and i did purchase this the company didn't send it to me but i did research and what i really liked about the mock mill was that it's got a stone grinding mechanism which really helps to protect the oils in the grain and it's made in germany and it's very well made but what makes this very affordable this was under 300. compared to other german uh electric grain grinders that can be like a thousand dollars but what makes this very affordable is that the housing is made from recycled material but it's very durable material i mean nice and hard i definitely think this is going to last me a lifetime now as i said i purchased this on my own but i was just so happy with that i contacted the mock mill company and they were very kind to give me a discount coupon code for my viewers and so if you open the description under this video you'll see the coupon code and it is eligible to be used for anything on their website i have the mach mill 100 they also have the mach mill 200 which is a little bigger i believe they still sell an attachment that if you have one of those stand mixers like a kitchenaid you can attach it to that they sell lots of ancient grains on their site so they sell a lot of interesting things so i think you'll enjoy their their website uh but in any event i have the mach mil100 and i have a couple of videos where i've showed grinding uh flour in here or grinding grain to make flour i also have an unboxing video and i'll be sure to put a link to the playlist of all those videos uh in the description below if you want to uh see more about it and learn more about it but in any event what's nice is it it goes from one to ten and so you can grind your grain in any capacity that you want i always like to grind it on about a five because i generally like i do like to sift out a little bit of the bran and the germ here i'm gonna do some hard white wheat uh and i find five is just a very perfect grain for being able to sift out a little bit of that bran and germ but if you go to one it's going to be very fine and 10 is going to be a much coarser grind but it's just got a little area here that you go ahead and pour your grain in and then i'm just going to go ahead and put the lid back on and then it has the little button up front here to turn on and we'll go ahead and grind that one cup of grain [Music] and that's it it literally took seconds to grind this beautiful hard white wheat into flour now if you have never had whole grain that you've ground yourself and grounded into flour you're going to love this because the fragrance there's nothing like it when you grind your own grain it just smells so fresh and now as i said i use the electric grain grinder but you can use a manual grain grinder and you might also be able to use one of those high speed blenders and i have a video where i show you how to grind grain with all of them and so i'll be sure to include that in the playlist along with the mock mill videos but in any event now you can take this and just use it as is or if you want you can put it in your refrigerator your freezer and keep it there for a while it'll stay fresh as i said you know whole grains do degrade a little quicker when they're ground because they do have the oils exposed in them now but in your freezer or your fridge they're definitely going to stay fresh for a while and if you want to sift this grain something as simple as a fine mesh strainer can help you out with this or you can actually buy different grades of sifters i believe i have a number 40 and a number 50 here and all that means is they sift out different amounts of the bran and the germ and these are the ones that really work well when you're trying to make maybe an all-purpose flour but i've used my plane sifter here that's available at most kitchen stores and it works great well if you'd like to learn more about stocking your prepper pantry and not just with whole grains but with real food with traditional foods foods that don't involve having to buy freeze-dried or expensive dehydrated foods or whatever the case may be just to stock it with traditional foods be sure to click on this video over here where i have a whole series of prepper pantry videos how to stock your pepper pantry with real food how to stock it on a budget how best to store it so you're going to be all set and i'll see you over there in my texas hill country kitchen love and god bless

Channel: Mary's Nest

Views: 29,353

Rating: 4.9550223 out of 5

Keywords: Essential Whole Grains for Your Prepper Pantry, Whole Grains for your prepper pantry, whole grains for your pantry, whole grains, whole grains list, ancient grains, ancient grains benefits, gluten free grains, wheat, einkorn, emmer, farro, spelt, kamut, rye, rye flour, hard red wheat, hard white wheat, soft white wheat, barley, oat groats, buckwheat, millet, quinoa, prepper pantry, food storage, long term food storage, pantry staples, pantry essentials, marysnest, marys nest

Id: g9YPdqPZQGc

Length: 68min 38sec (4118 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 30 2021