Buckwheat Roti or Kuttu atta chapathi

Few days back I was reading through an article in NDTV food column, where they had given a good list of vegetarian protein sources. One of them I use regularly in my cooking is Quinoa (pronounced as "keen-wah") is a south american grain/seed that contains all the essential amino acids. It is very suitable for a vegan or strict vegetarian diet. Next in that list is buckwheat (called kuttu in hindi). Buckwheat sounds like its another type of wheat right? The answer is a no. Its an edible seed like quinoa. There's no relationship between buckwheat and wheat whatsoever.

It looks like this,

If you are thinking to be on a low carb diet for whatever reason, you can happily include buckwheat in your diet. Buckwheat is gluten free, rich in essential nutrients like manganese, magnesium and copper, prevents gall stones in women because they are rich in insoluble fiber etc etc. All these tells that buckwheat is one of the healthiest (non)grain to include. As a matter of fact, in India some people take it during their ekadhashi fast when they follow a strict no grain food. 

What are the viable cooking options of buckwheat? well you can make porridge aka kanji by cooking buckwheat in water and add cardomom, little milk and brown sugar or honey (similar to oatmeal), make buckwheat dosa, buckwheat chapathi etc. You even get soba noodles (japanese style) made of buckwheat. 

Last week sometime while I was browsing through the aisles of my local Indian grocery store to find something interesting to cook, found this nice pack of buckwheat flour. They look like red wheat flour. I immediately came back home and swung into action. Had a hot hot buckwheat roti and a nice gravy for dinner. It turned out the rotis were super soft even after a day. It was really light in the stomach that night. Wanted to share this recipe with you all.

Buckwheat Roti 

(the below quantity makes 12 to 15 chapathis)

Ingredients:

Whole wheat atta - 1 1/2 cup

Buckwheat flour - 1 1/2 cup

salt and water as required

Recipe:

- Make a pliable dough with whole wheat atta, buckwheat flour and salt by adding water little by little.

- keep the dough aside for 15 mins and make chapathis as usual.

Note:

- You can add warm water instead of cold water, it naturally get a soft roti.

- I sometimes add a little bit of curd if I want to keep it for the next day too. 

- This chapathi goes very well with a nice gravy. 

- The rotis will be in a chocolate brown color, don't mind that. 

We loved hot hot rotis. I have decided to add buckwheat regularly in my roti preparations now. What are you waiting for?

Enjoy :-)