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This ancient grain could help the Plains adapt to a drier future.
The star ingredient in xiao mi zhou, a popular porridge in China that can be sweetened with sugar or topped with savory fixings like sweet potato and pickled vegetables, is millet — often proso millet. A small, round, gluten-free grain that originated in China 10,000 years ago, proso millet also features in regional variations in Indian dishes like crepe-thin dosas and puffy idli, a steamed flour-and-lentil breakfast cake that looks remarkably like an Uncrustable.
Millets, which also include species like finger millet, pearl millet, foxtail millet, and sorghum, are a loosely related group of ancient grains that mostly originate in semi-arid parts of Asia and Africa. They’re a climate-resilient bunch, generally able to take drought, heat, and poor soil in stride. Their hardiness and nutritiousness, combined with their low profile on the global stage, spurred the United Nations to declare 2023 the International Year of Millets.
Even among this generally drought-tolerant group of grains, proso millet’s ability to produce a crop with limited water stands out, says James Schnable, a professor and corn geneticist at University of Nebraska-Lincoln and co-founder of the proso millet breeding company Dryland Genetics. While this grain is still little-known in the U.S. and faces an uphill battle to find a regular spot on American dinner plates, it’s looking increasingly appealing to some farmers and plant breeders in the Plains and beyond, as those regions face a drier future.
A Resilient Grain
Proso millet’s comfort with dry conditions is what first drew Gary Wietgrefe, a board member at the education and advocacy organization North American Millets Alliance, to the grain in the late 1970s. Wietgrefe, who’s been involved with millets as a farmer, buyer, and researcher for decades, watched as wheat farmers in dry South Dakota paid a price — in the form of erosion — for making the seemingly logical choice to leave their fields fallow between harvests so the precious soil moisture could recharge. “Wind and water erosion was creating gullies in the fields, filling up dams, making muddy rivers, and everything else,” he tells me. Wietgrefe convinced many of those farmers to start growing proso millet during some of the fallow periods, because doing so would keep the fields covered longer, reducing erosion and retaining soil moisture, while requiring little water and giving the farmers another crop to sell.
Some of those same dry regions, and others, have been getting drier, making proso millet still more appealing. Schnable, of Dryland Genetics, came to the ancient grain because he saw a need to incorporate a water-efficient crop into rotations in a part of the country where groundwater reserves are dwindling. “In the area we’re targeting — Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska — a lot of irrigation has been pulling water from the Ogallala Aquifer, and time is running out,” he says. Thirsty crops like corn are partly to blame. Climate change plays a role, too: Higher temperatures are evaporating rainfall before it hits the ground more often, reducing the amount of water available to recharge the Ogallala. Over the coming decades, still-drier conditions are likely in the Great Plains, as climate change wears on.
Proso millet uses just half the water of corn per pound, Schnable tells me. Also compelling is the fact that proso millet is low-input, which keeps costs low, and that it grows from seed to harvest in a quick 60 to 90 days. That speed makes it a good “rescue crop,” meaning that if a previous crop has been lost, say, to extreme weather, proso can quickly be planted and harvested in its stead.
A Promising Ingredient
Among American grains, proso millet is an underdog. It covers just 450,000 or so acres, says Wietgrefe — a fraction of the massive footprint of a crop like corn, which covers 90 million acres. Mostly, proso millet is used in birdseed, though some is baked into multigrain breads, brewed into beer, sold as whole grains to be cooked like quinoa, or ground into gluten-free flour, such as millet flour sold by Bob’s Red Mill. (The packaging doesn’t specify what kind of millet, so I reached out to the company, which said the flour is U.S.-grown proso millet.)
The grain is grown at a small scale today in part because, like other neglected crops, it hasn’t received the level of federal investment in research, education, and crop breeding that major grains have. Its yields are low compared to a crop like corn — for now. Dryland Genetics began releasing new varieties of proso millet in 2022, and has already made strides on increasing yields, which Schnable explains should speed adoption. “We thought,” he says, “if we can just increase the yield a modest amount, that is new profit for the farmer, and it means farmers grow a lot more proso millet.”
He thinks proso millet could eventually cover 5 to 10 million acres, and play a bigger role in sustainable foods and as a livestock feed. Joni Kindwall-Moore, founder of the millets food company Snacktivist and co-founder of North American Millets Alliance, says that scaling the grain up will require more of the infrastructure necessary to process it, and better visibility into how farmers can access that infrastructure. Schnable also notes the importance of overcoming the “chicken-or-egg issue” of supply and demand: Farmers want assurance that there are buyers beyond bird-seed companies, and buyers need to know there’s a regular supply hitting consistent quality marks. Earlier this year, Weitgrefe published a farmer-facing set of just such quality guidelines — called “grain standards” — that he and Kindwall-Moore think will give farmers and food companies alike more confidence.
Finding a Place on Plates
Just as importantly, proso millet still needs to find a place in the American culinary imagination. While it has trickled into niche products — some crackers here, some drinks and gluten-free breads there — it’d be hard to say that anything has yet captured widespread attention.
What might? Perhaps the kaleidoscope of proso millet dishes found in Asian and African cuisines. Or perhaps the unique flavor that its flour brings to baked goods. Brian Levy, a cookbook author and recipe developer who recently published a gluten-free sheet cake recipe in NYT Cooking made in part with proso millet, says that “cake batter made with millet flour tastes more like cake batter.” He uses its buttery, batter-y flavor to advantage in carrot cake, too, and calls for it in his signature DIY gluten-free flour blend.
Following Levy’s line of thinking, I developed the galette recipe that follows using a blend of all-purpose flour and proso millet flour in the dough. The wheat flour lends structure thanks to gluten, while the proso lends its batter-y flavor. There’s more culinary dreaming and scheming to be done with this drought-tolerant grain, but dessert is as good a place as any to start.
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RECIPE: Millet and Hazelnut Stone Fruit Galette
- Yield: Serves 8
Description
This galette is an homage to summer and climate-resilient ingredients. Its star, millet flour, is becoming increasingly appealing to farmers in the Great Plains and parts of the Midwest as those regions become drier (read more on that here). At least as importantly for dessert-ophiles, millet flour combines with all-purpose flour to create a tender but well-structured crust with a slightly cake-batter-y flavor. I used ground hazelnuts in the creamy frangipane layer because they’re one of the perennial crops that can make agriculture in the Midwest healthier and more resilient. The stone fruit — I used apricots and plums, but you could just as effectively swap in nectarines, cherries, small peaches, or a blend — well, they’re for the summer of it all.
Ingredients
The dough
- 7 Tbsps unsalted butter
- 2/3 cup plus 2 tbsps spooned-and-leveled millet flour
- 2/3 cup spooned-and-leveled all-purpose flour
- 2 Tbsps granulated sugar
- 1/2 tsp Diamond Crystal kosher salt
- 3 1/2-4 Tbsps ice water
The hazelnut frangipane
- 3/4 cup ground hazelnuts
- 1/4 cup millet flour
- 1/4 cup granulated sugar
- Pinch salt
- 2 Tbsps unsalted butter, melted and slightly cooled
- 1 large egg
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
The galette
- 1 1/3 lbs stone fruits, halved (or quartered, if large)
- 1 Tbsp melted butter
- 2-3 Tbsps granulated sugar
- Apricot or other jam, heated until it thins considerably, to glaze
Instructions
- To prepare the galette dough, cube the butter and set it aside in the refrigerator. In a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, mix together the millet flour, all-purpose flour, sugar, and salt until combined. Add the cold butter cubes and mix until the butter pieces are mostly the size of peas (you can also do this step with a pastry cutter or with very cold, deft fingers). Add 3 tablespoons of ice water to start and mix just until the dough comes together, kneading it once or twice to help. If it’s still quite dry, add up to another tablespoon of ice water, a bit at a time. Flatten the dough into a disc, wrap it, and refrigerate until ready to use.
- For the hazelnut frangipane, grind the hazelnuts in a food processor until you have a coarse meal. In a medium bowl, whisk together the ground hazelnuts, millet flour, sugar, and salt. Add in the butter, egg, and vanilla, and mix until combined. Refrigerate until ready to use.
- Preheat the oven to 375°F.
- Retrieve the chilled dough and roll it out to a 12- to 13-inch round between two sheets of parchment paper. Transfer it to a sheet pan, keeping the bottom layer of parchment paper under it. Retrieve the chilled frangipane and spread it evenly across the surface of the dough, leaving a 1 1/2-inch border.
- Arrange the stone fruits as snugly as possible atop the frangipane, leaving no gaps (this will make the baked galette appear fuller and more lush). Fold the edges of dough over the fruit to form a crust, pressing together any holes or gaps in the dough so that fruit juices won’t run out during baking. Brush the crust with melted butter, and brush the remainder gently over the fruit. Sprinkle 1 tablespoon of sugar over the crust, and 1 tablespoon of sugar over the fruit (or 2 tablespoons if the fruits are just-ripe or slightly underripe).
- Bake for 50 to 60 minutes, or until the crust is browned and the fruit has visibly softened. Let cool for a half hour before slicing. Because the frangipane is moist, the galette is best served within 12 hours of making it. However, it will keep for up to two days in an airtight container.
Notes
- Use Bob’s Red Mill millet flour: Its fine grind works well in this recipe. (Thanks to Brian Levy for this tip.)
- If you happen to have hazelnut flour: It works in place of the ground hazelnuts, as long as it is whole, and not de-fatted, hazelnut flour.
- Lean into Midwestern resilience: Substitute a portion of the stone fruit for currants, mulberries, or any of the other perennial fruits that the Savanna Institute is jazzed about. If you do, just wait until the final 20 minutes of baking to add the berries.
