Love Affair with Farro

My family has recently welcomed farro into our world. I think I've had it in a dish before at a restaurant, but I hadn't had any hands on experience with it until recently.  The bag of grain has been in the pantry for over a month waiting for me to get with it.



I decided at the last minute to sub farro in for Jasmine rice in an Asian chicken dish and the kids absolutely loved the grain. They asked for seconds of the farro only (no asian chicken) with tomato, onion and soy sauce.  I obliged and partook as well.




I really enjoyed the chewiness of the farro and imagined subbing it in for oatmeal for breakfast.  With the leftovers of the 2nd half of the bag I added butter, honey, currants and milk. It tasted just like I imagined - creamy and chewy and healthy.



The reason it took so long for me to tackle farro is because I was unsure of how to cook it properly. Isn't that silly? To cook white rice of any type, I use my rice cooker. That's a no-brainer. But when I tried cooking brown rice in my rice cooker (many, many moons ago), the steam holes were gummed up with brown rice residue. I researched a better way to cook brown rice and found that baking the rice worked perfectly.

Because it was last minute and I just wanted to try it already, I dumped the farro into the cooker just as I do with white rice. 1 part grain to 2 parts water. It turned out perfect both times.

Now I want to use it in a salad. I've found a lot of recipes that add a lot of ingredients to make a very heavy dish (which I am sure I'd be okay with) but right now I'm picturing adding in farro to the tomato feta salad we serve up around her this time of year.

I am also thinking that adding cooked farro into cookies might be a cool yummy thing too...

What do you think? Have you tried farro? Any suggestions?