Buckwheat with creamy mushroom sauce: fluffy groats, no meat
The dinner many Polish homes ate on meatless Fridays and keep coming back to, because it is cheap, quick and genuinely good: fluffy buckwheat cooked by the absorption method and a sauce of button mushrooms browned in butter, thickened with flour and sour cream, with dill and lemon. Forty minutes, two pots, no meat and nobody misses it.
Your own work in that: 15 min.
- Buckwheat cooking 15 min
- Buckwheat resting 10 min
- Sauce 15 min
Step by step
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Rinse the buckwheat
Tip the groats into a fine sieve and rinse under running water until it runs clear. Rinsing washes off the dust that glues the grains into a lump.
Ingredients: 300 g toasted buckwheat groats (kasha) · 750 ml water · 1 tsp salt · 20 g butter
TipToasted (brown) buckwheat has a nutty flavour and stays fluffy. Untoasted (pale green) is milder, cooks 2 minutes less and overcooks more easily; if you use it, give it 650 ml water.
Until the water runs clear
Cook by the absorption method
Cover the groats with 750 ml cold water (roughly 1 : 2 by volume — 300 g of groats is about 375 ml), salt, bring to the boil. Turn the heat to its lowest, cover and cook 15 minutes, until the water has gone and small holes appear on the surface. Don't stir meanwhile: stirring releases starch and glues the grains.
One to two, covered, no stirringLeave the buckwheat covered
Take the pot off the heat, put the butter on top of the groats and leave covered 10 minutes. The steam finishes the grains and the butter soaks in. Only then fluff with a fork.
TipThese 10 minutes are the difference between fluffy buckwheat and a wet, gluey layer at the bottom. Start the sauce while the buckwheat cooks and you will finish it during the rest.
Brown the mushrooms
Slice the mushrooms, dice the onion finely. Heat the butter in a wide pan over high heat and fry the mushrooms 6–8 minutes, stirring rarely, until they release their water, then drive it off and brown. Add the onion and fry another 3 minutes until soft.
Ingredients: 500 g button mushrooms · 1 pcs onion · 40 g butter · 1½ tbsp plain flour · 300 ml vegetable stock · 150 g sour cream, 18 % · ½ bunch dill · ½ pcs lemon, juice · ½ tsp salt · ½ tsp black pepper
TipMushrooms over low heat stew in their own water and stay grey and rubbery. High heat and a wide pan give browned, meaty slices with flavour.
High heat, browned, then the onion
Thicken with flour and stock
Sprinkle the mushrooms with the flour, stir and fry a minute so the flour loses its raw taste. Pour in the stock, stirring constantly, and simmer 3 minutes, until the sauce thickens.
Flour over the mushrooms, stock, thickening
Add the sour cream, dill and lemon
Temper the sour cream: stir it in a small bowl with a ladle of hot sauce, then pour into the pan. Heat through without a hard boil, 2 minutes. Add the chopped dill, lemon juice, salt and pepper. Taste: the sauce should be boldly seasoned, the buckwheat is mild.
Tempered sour cream, dill, lemon
Serve
Fluff the buckwheat with a fork, spoon onto plates and ladle the sauce over. A brined pickle or sauerkraut salad alongside. The sauce keeps 2 days in the fridge; the buckwheat 3, reheated over steam or with a spoon of water under a lid.
Buckwheat, sauce, dill, a pickle beside
Before you start
With an egg
Buckwheat, sauce and a fried egg on top, the yolk running into the sauce. The filling meat-free version.
With forest mushrooms
In autumn, half button mushrooms and half bay boletes, or 3 dried mushrooms soaked and chopped, with their soaking water replacing some of the stock. A darker, deeper sauce.
The buckwheat came out gluey
Too much water, stirring during cooking, or no covered rest. A 1 : 2 ratio, a lid and 10 minutes of peace.
Nutrition
per 100 gStep photos are computer-generated from the recipe.
