Amaranth? What on earth is Amaranth? That’s what I was thinking when I found myself surfing “my new roots” for the millionth time the other day. Amaranth, apparently, is a delicious and super nutritious quinoa like grain with an amino acid profile higher than meat and more calcium than milk! The grains are inside those pink flowers you see below. Needless to say it takes forever to harvest, which is one of the reasons this grain is a bit costly.

Talk about a superfood. Below is what the harvested grains look like.

Sarah Britton uses a pumpkin base for her pumpkin pie amaranth porridge, but I didn’t have any on hand, nor do I have quite the affinity for coconut as she seems to have. My impetus for trying this recipe was to feed this nutritious grain to my infant son and I don’t think his system could handle the richness and complexity of the coconut just yet. So here is my first experimentation with amaranth, which we both loved! My son ate more than I did the first time I made it!
Ingredients:
1/2 cup amaranth
1.25 cups water
1/2 acorn or butternut squash flesh. I cut mine in half, raw and bake it upside down on a baking sheet in 1″ of water for 45 minutes (haven’t tried pumpkin yet, but hope to soon)
1 tsp cinnamon
Dash salt
1tsp vanilla, or 1/3 vanilla bean
Maple syrup to taste
Combine amaranth, water, squash, cinnamon salt and vanilla in a pot. Bring to boil, whisking often to break up the squash chunks. Reduce to simmer. Simmer 20-25 minutes stirring occasionally with a whisk. Remove from heat and season with maple syrup to taste. I used about 2 tbsp for the whole thing.

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