Buckwheat Groats
Raw or toasted (kasha), not actually wheat
Buckwheat Groats: stovetop for 15–20 min (Boil → low simmer, lid on).
Cooking Methods
↕ Slide the temperature to see how cook times change
You'll see two kinds at the store: raw groats (pale, greenish tinge, mild) and kasha (pre-toasted, brown, deeply nutty). Buy raw if you want options, since you can always toast it yourself, but kasha is the move for traditional Eastern European dishes. Rinse groats in a fine-mesh strainer until the water runs clear before cooking. Store them airtight in the pantry for 2–3 months or in the freezer for up to a year, because the fats in buckwheat go rancid faster than true grains. Despite the name, it's not wheat at all. It's a gluten-free seed.
Buckwheat cooks fast and turns to mush even faster, so treat it more like pasta than rice: 1:2 water ratio, lid on, low simmer for 15–20 minutes and pull it off the heat the moment the water is absorbed. The single biggest upgrade is toasting raw groats in a dry pan for 4–5 minutes before the water goes in. It kills the slight bitterness and brings out the nutty flavor that makes buckwheat worth eating. I skip the stirring entirely: lift the lid once at 15 minutes and if the water is gone, it's done.