How to Cook Wheat Berries (Ebly)

My detailed guide on how to cook wheat berries from scratch!

Cooked wheat berries make for a lovely side dish that you can serve up instead of rice.

I explain further below all the details about wheatberries and what to look out for.

Jump to:

• 📕 What are wheat berries?
• 🧂 Taste
• 📜 Varieties
• 🛒 Buying
• 🔪 How to cook it?
• 💭 FAQs
• 🥣 Serving
• 📖 Recipe

📕 What are wheat berries?

Wheat Berries are whole wheat kernels without the hull and husk.

They come in yellow or red and in hard or soft form.

Wheat berries all over the world are usually ground to a flour or left to sprout to make wheatgrass juice.

Yet, there are wheat berries that need no soaking and that are cooked through after 10 minutes.

🧂 Taste

Wheat berries taste a bit nutty, kind of like couscous (which is rolled durum).

You can compare them a bit to risotto rice, minus the rice-like flavor.

Wheat berries are actually almost tasteless but they take in other flavors beautifully.

They compliment other main course meals really well.

📜 Varieties

Wheat berries are incredibly common in Europe, and especially in France, Germany, Switzerland, and Austria.

This is because we use this healthier grain instead of rice served as a side dish with seafood and meat meals.

In the US and other places, you mainly get hard wheat berries and soft berries.

Yet you can get the wheat berries that we buy in Europe in the US too, they are called Ebly.

Ebly is the brand that popularized wheat berries in Europe, so we ended up just calling this grain Ebly.

Ebly wheat berries only take 10 to 15 minutes cooking to turn out soft and fluffy and that's the wheat berry you need to get!

This is because ebly wheat berries are pre-cooked durum wheat berries and that way they take only a short time to cook through at home.

🛒 Buying

I recommend that you buy ebly wheat berries to cook quickly and easily wheat berries at home.

Just like you would cook the rice!

You can buy ebly online on amazon for about 3$ or check your local Walmart, they must just have it.

Ebly is rather french so french specialty stores will always have ebly.

If you can't get ebly, you can always get soft wheat berries, which is incidentally also organic.

However, keep in mind that soft wheat berries take much longer to cook because they have not been pre-cooked.

That means soft wheat berries take about 60-90 mins to cook through to get soft.

Ebly on the other hand only takes 10 minutes to get cooked.

To cook soft wheat berries fast, you can try soaking them overnight as this might reduce the cooking time or cook them in your pressure cooker.

🔪 How to cook it?

Cooking wheat berries is easy.

Keep in mind that the cooking duration depends on the wheat berries that you used.

I talk about that in the post on top.

Pre-cooked ebly wheat berry takes about 10-15 mins to cook through and soft wheat berry takes around 60-90 mins.

Get the full recipe in the recipe card at the bottom and watch the video.

Step 1

Pour wheat berries into a pot.

Cover with water and season with salt.

Stir everything and keep over the heat.

Step 2

Allow the wheat berries to cook gradually over medium heat.

The wheat berries will get more fluffy and will expand completely once they are done cooking through.

Stir occasionally to make sure the grains don't stick at the bottom of the pot.

Step 3

Taste a grain to see if it is cooked through.

It's done when it's soft and not hard.

Strain the water from the wheat berries and serve the wheatberries as a side dish with seafood and meat.

Or use the cooked wheat berries in another dish as in a salad or add to soup.

💭 FAQs

🥣 Serving

We usually enjoy our cooked wheat berries as a side dish without seasonings, all-natural.

If you have leftover wheat berries, you can use it to make a soup by using clear broth and using carrots and leeks.

Or check out some of the recipe ideas below.

• Wheat berry Salad by anediblemosaic.com
• Armenian Yogurt wheatberry Soup by curiouscuisiniere.com

📖 Recipe