Millet porridge is useful in many diseases. Quite often it is used for diet. With heart disease, millet porridge makes up for potassium and magnesium, which is contained in cereals. When recovering from an illness, millet porridge removes the decay products of antibiotics that a person received for a long time. Millet porridge perfectly restores strength, strengthens the immune system. No wonder every cook in the army units knows how to cook millet porridge so that the soldier is always full, strong, healthy and brave.
From childhood I was accustomed to millet porridge. At a time when all my peers were eating up semolina porridge, I mainly ate millet porridge. I did not go to kindergarten, I lived with my grandmother and grandfather, and from early childhood I remember grandmother’s cereals in a cast iron on the stove. My grandmother knew a lot about how to cook millet porridge. She always turned out to be friable.
I’ll tell you a little secret about preparing cereals for making such porridge, which my grandmother gave me. First, millet groats, which you buy in a store, need to be washed well in seven waters. First, wash the cereal in cold water, then in warm and, finally, in hot water. After that, dry it a little and lightly calcine in a dry cast-iron frying pan, that is, without oil. Such cereals can be stored in a linen bag and used to make porridge.
When grandmother had to cook millet porridge, she just took the prepared cereal, poured it with boiling water, salted and cooked for about twenty minutes on a slow fire of a kerosene. I remember well that she never opened the lid. Then she poured water, poured new boiling water, added oil, slices of pumpkin or turnip and lowered the pot on the stove into a special hole. She poured water on four fingers high above the level of the cereal. So the porridge was prepared until the water was completely evaporated.
With this method of cooking porridge, it always turned out to be friable, not sticking together. Apple jam or honey was already added to the plate with the finished porridge.
Dad often cooked millet porridge at our place. Naturally, we did not have a stove, and the process of making millet porridge was carried out on a gas stove. At first, dad poured the cereal with hot water and cooked for about ten minutes, then drained the water and again poured boiling water. So he changed the water twice. The third time, dad took boiling water twice as much as cereals and cooked until cooked on low heat for about half an hour. Butter, sugar, raisins or jam was added to the finished porridge. For dad, the question was never how to cook millet porridge; he knew about this from childhood. But he got viscous millet porridge, probably because the cereal absorbed water when washing, boiling, and dad took a lot of water.
With the birth of a grandson, we tried to give him different cereals. We grind the grits in a coffee grinder and boiled baby cereals. But most of all he liked millet porridge with milk. When the grandson came to visit us, we cooked porridge not in water, but in milk. I prepared millet groats, as usual, according to my grandmother's recipe. She took a glass of cereal, poured two glasses of hot water and boiled water over medium heat. Then she poured boiling water and cooked for about ten minutes. After this, the water was drained, and the porridge was poured with hot milk in an amount of two and a half cups and brought to readiness under the lid over low heat. I didn’t salt the croup. Salt, sugar, butter was added to the finished porridge, in a plate.
Such porridge was eaten by both adults and a baby. He ate for both cheeks! Maybe just for company at a common table, or maybe in our family the love for millet porridge is genetically transmitted.
The secret of preparing cereals for the preparation of millet porridge is passed on and carried out perfectly from generation to generation. But the question of how to cook millet porridge is already solved by everyone in their own way. My grandmother’s porridge turned out to be friable, my dad’s viscous, and mine’s liquid.
Now my daughters in my families continue to maintain the tradition of cooking millet porridge. The youngest daughter cooks it in a slow cooker, and the eldest - in clay pots in the oven.