Using Sedge Grain As a Healthful Cereal or Grinding Grain
Wild sedge plants are a hardy species and grow in many areas. Since wild sedge makes a seed head, an experiment was devised here at Winterlake Research Center to find out if sedge seeds could be used for grain.
Grain provides the carbohydrates needed for the energy the body needs to do work. Through a search of the available literature, it was found that sedge seeds have a good amount of starch, fiber and minerals. What was not apparent was whether or not sedge seeds made a good grain. In order to find out about the suitability of sedge seeds for grain, a number of explorations were carried out.
First, a variety of sedge seeds were harvested and dried. The harvesting was done in late summer, at the time the seeds began to separate from the stalks. Sedge seeds are tenacious and so can be harvested efficiently. Most sedge plants did not produce enough or big enough seeds to get enough for experiments. Three kinds of sedge had enough grain to harvest for trials. A quart of cleaned grain was harvested from each type of sedge that produced well. The cleaned sedge grain was dried and used in cooking experiments.
The first experiment was to see if the grain could be cooked whole to the point of being soft enough to chew. The answer was no. The grain would eventually soften somewhat, but the tough outer shell around the seed was still tough and hard.
The next experiment was to crack the grain in a grain grinder to see if it could be made chewable. The answer was , ?sort of?. The sedge grain could almost be chewed. In an emergency food situation, cracked sedge grain could be used for nutrition. Some starch could be leached out of the cracked grain, but it was hard work for little reward.
The breakthrough came when the sedge grain was fully ground into flour. The flour had the consistency of whole wheat flour. It was very dark and smelled rich, with a faint nutty smell. There was no discernible difference in the flours of the three different types of sedge plants. Various baked breads and pan breads were tried. All met with good success. The best baked goods were when the flour was mixed fifty/fifty by volume with wheat flour.
The consistency of the baked goods was similar to whole wheat bread, but slightly drier. Pancakes of sedge grain were very good, with a taste of nuts and rich whole wheat. For pancakes, the sedge grain had to be limited to forty percent sedge to sixty percent white wheat flour. For an unknown reason, whole wheat flour just made a crispy, unchewable Frisbee type thing.
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