Amaranth is a grain crop like no other. Technically a pseudocereal, the plants are the size of corn, and have similar planting dates and space requirements. However, the seed is dramatically different: each plant produces tens of thousands of tiny seeds (we’re estimating about 6,000 per teaspoon, or 290,000 per cup) on a seedhead about 2’/60cm long and 8”/20cm wide, which is made up of many smaller branches. Seed matures unevenly, with the plant continuing to flower and produce more seed even as the first seeds mature and begin to fall off the seedhead.
In our climate, we have not been able to get amaranth to dry in the garden. It keeps growing happily along until frost kills it, at which point many seeds are still too wet to store because of their uneven maturity. Also, autumn rains, which are common here, can start to cause early-maturing seeds to sprout. Our average first frost date in the fall is September 25th. So at some arbitrary point near that date, we simply begin harvesting.
There are various ways to harvest amaranth. We are developing a favourite technique, but like all our gardening choices, it is influenced by various factors. Some people like to cut their whole amaranth plants and hang them upside-down indoors to dry; however, we are growing too much amaranth, or have too little indoor space, to do that. Some like waiting to harvest until a week after frost has killed the leaves, because they say this makes it easier to thresh; however, when we tried it we didn’t notice much difference. We also have a lot of other crops to harvest around the frost date, and the weather is not always favourable for harvesting! So we just fit in our amaranth harvesting whenever we have time and reasonably good weather in late September.
We harvest amaranth by breaking the heads off the plants, leaving the stems standing (when we’re done, we cut them down to the ground with a billhook/machete to decompose through the winter).
To get the grain off the head, we have tried several techniques:
- rubbing it by hand on a screen made of hardware cloth
- flipping a bicycle upside down, cranking the pedals, and sticking the heads into the spokes of the spinning rear wheel
- rubbing it by foot in our threshing box (the construction and use of which is described in our article on threshing and winnowing)
- rubbing it with our feet on a flat piece of plywood
The feet-on-plywood method seems to be the most efficient. Legs are stronger than arms, and the bicycle didn’t seem to work any faster anyhow.
We know of someone who has had success with putting the heads on a trampoline and getting his kids to jump on it, so if you have one anyhow….
(By the way, the colour variation you see in these pictures is because they’re from two different varieties.)
We sift everything which comes off the heads through a screen of ½” hardware cloth; everything which doesn’t go through – mostly bits of seedhead, stems and leaves – is discarded. Then we repeat the process using a ¼” hardware cloth screen (the reason to do this double sifting, instead of only using the smaller screen, is that we have found that it is faster if we remove the really large stuff and re-sift, rather than catching everything with the small screen). We like to do the processing to this stage in the garden, so that we can throw all the pieces we sift out directly back onto the garden and don’t have to carry them in to the house with us. We carry enough stuff around as it is.
The seeds are now mixed with bits of flowers, hulls and leaves which are smaller than ¼”. To remove more of the chaff, we winnow it by pouring the seeds from one container to another in front of a box fan. This is easiest if your pouring container is square, so that you can get a nice even “curtain” of seeds so that everything is equally affected by the wind as you pour. The winnowing removes everything lighter than the seeds. Now we do a final scalping using an old colander, which has holes only slightly larger than the amaranth seeds. Because this is a slow process, we want to have as little stuff as possible at this point, which is why we do it after winnowing.
What remains is mostly seeds, though there will still be some flower bits mixed in. Our seeds are always quite wet still, because so many were harvested before they could dry down fully. So we spread them out in a shallow layer (no thicker than a finger-width) on a tarp or tray to dry. For the next week or so, we stir the seeds around and spread them out again each day, so that everything can dry evenly. If the weather is sunny, we move them outside for the day and bring them in for the night. When they are dry, the seeds will be hard, and they will not feel cool to the hands. We then winnow them once more, to remove the chaff which has now dried enough to be lighter than the seeds.
Properly dried amaranth can be stored in glass jars.
It can be cooked as porrige, popped like corn, or ground into flour.
Amaranth Porridge
1 ½ c. water
½ tsp. salt
1 c. amaranth
Bring water and salt to a boil. Add amaranth and stir. Return to a boil, then reduce heat to a simmer. Cook until the seeds are tender and all the water is absorbed.
Popped Amaranth
Popping works better with Copperhead than Opopeo.
Tastes great as a snack/breakfast cereal! You can mix it with honey, ground parched corn, dried fruit, salt, and a little water to make delicious snack balls.
Get a frying pan seriously hot and pour amaranth in so it bounces and spreads into a single layer of seeds not quite touching. This works out to maybe a tablespoon at a time. I prefer to heat the pan by putting it inside our wood stove on a rack once the fire is down to coals, but you can also do it stovetop.
If the pan is hot enough, the grain will start to pop within a few seconds and slow right down in 10-20 seconds. If it’s not popping, the pan isn’t hot enough or you have the wrong variety. Pour it out fast so that it doesn’t burn, and repeat.
This is probably hard on a cast iron pan since it’s dry high heat. Maybe use one that’s already warped/round-bottomed if you have one.