I have been really enjoying experimenting with millet. I have been amazed at what I can do with it. One of the things that I really appreciate about this grain is how UN-whole grainy it is in baked goods. It is much lighter in texture and taste than whole wheat would be. It can almost taste like cornmeal.
But that’s not to say that a millet baked good would be the same as a wheat baked good. For example, these millet biscuits are 100% whole grain, yet manage to have a pretty light texture. But they don’t hold their structure very well since millet does not contain gluten. This means that they spread quite a bit, so they are thinner than normal biscuits and more crumbly. They aren’t easy to split either, so I eat them plain or with butter spread on the top. All to say, enjoy these as something different and don’t try to make them the same as a wheat biscuit. I made a batch of these which we enjoyed with different meals.
We found them a lovely accompaniment to a green salad. What’s a salad without a roll or other bready side?
Soup, also, just doesn’t seem to taste as good without something to dip in to it.
In a Jane Austen movie, I noticed in one scene how they sat at a large rustic wooden table loaded with cold cuts, breads and mustards for a casual lunch. I realized what a easy lunch that would be! Here is my half eaten, Austen inspired, lunch plate. Cold pot roast, whole grain mustard and my millet biscuit.
These aren’t soaked, but I will develop a soaked biscuit recipe soon. These will always make a nice last minute biscuit.
Buttermilk Millet Drop Biscuits
2 cups millet flour
3 teaspoons of baking powder
1 teaspoon of salt (1/2 teaspoon if using salted butter)
6 tablespoons butter, cut into small cubes (I love Kerrygold)
3/4 cup buttermilk
2 eggs
Preheat oven to 425
Grease a cookie sheet
Combine first three ingredients, stir well to combine (no lumps!), rub the butter into the dough with your fingers, or cut in with forks/knives until the mixture is well combined and the butter is the size of peas. Stir in the buttermilk and eggs. Drop in rounded spoonfuls onto sheet (I make 12).
Bake for 10-15 minutes, until edges are slightly browned. Remove from pan right away with a thin metal spatula. (Careful! They are a little crumbly! They will not be quite as crumbly once they have cooled.) Serve with butter, honey, or jam.
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Looks yummy, I will have to find some millet flour and try this 🙂
If you add 1tsp. of guar gum for each cup of flour it will hold the biscuits together better. The use of guar gum is important if you are using gluten-free flours. You can found guar gum in the health food section of most grocery stores. I hope this helps.
Dionne
Dionne,
Thanks for the tip! I had heard of that before. I actually find that the eggs do fine in binding this together, if one is careful when they are hot. But it’s good to know.
I tried these biscuits tonight and they were SUPERB! Thank you for sharing your recipe!
I doubled the recipe, and it made a plentiful amount! We were out of buttermilk, so I dolloped a bit of vinegar into the milk to sit while I mixed the other ingredients. I also added 1 tsp of xantham gum (to the doubled recipe).
Thank you so much for sharing! This recipe was so simple and easy. My boys ate 3 each at dinner!
Deborah,
I am so glad that they turned out for you. I think they are pretty kid friendly. We love them too. 🙂
I LOVE millet flour! I can’t wait to try this! You might find that butter flavored crisco works better in this flour and holds things together better than butter (although I know it is NOT healthy… but it works well in gluten free baking) I can’t wait to try these! Thank you for the great recipe!
These sound wonderful!!! I’ve tried to find a good whole grain recipe for biscuits, but my family hasn’t liked any of them so far. The way that you describe millet sounds like they would, though!!! I need to head to my natural foods store asap and purchase millet!!
Thank you for sharing!
His,
Mrs. U
Kimi,
Hi! I know this is a really old post, but I just found this recipe and wanted to try it. A couple of questions, though:
How would it work if the millet was soaked in the buttermilk for a day or so first? Do you think that would work? According to NT, even gluten-free grains need a good soaking to remove antinutrients.
Also, do you think I can use my home grain grinder to make millet into flour? I have millet, but no flour.
TIA for your help! I’m so excited to try these!
http://oreganicthrifty.blogspot.com
Carrie,
It is true that all grains need to be soaked to remove anti-nutrients. I was always planning on trying to play around this recipe to come up with a soaked recipe, but it never happened and now I am off of dairy! You could try soaking the flour with buttermilk, but what you will have to figure out is whether to try to cut in the butter first into the flour, and then add the buttermilk, and then when you want to add the salt and baking soda and eggs. This recipe is more dry because it is a biscuit, so it does make things more complicated in the soaking process.
You can check out the NT recipe for biscuits and see if her method helps you out at all.
I have always ground my own millet flour, so that should work just fine.
Hope that helps!
Kimi
I was craving a good biscuit recipe to go with my CSA vegetable minestrone soup, and decided to go online and look for millet biscuits. Your blog was the first to pop up! I thought that was so funny because Nourishing Gourmet remains on my own list of blogs that I read.
Anyway, great biscuits. Millet flour is definitely worth experimenting with.
Thank you so much for this amazing page! I love it! I spent so much time flipping through it! I too am a Sally Fallon, Nourishing Traditions nut! It completely revolutionized my kitchen!
I have a similar blog, but I wanted to let you know that this recipe works wonderfully with yogurt instead of buttermilk too! I know in the winter I don’t have milk available and I stick with Hawthorne Valley yogurt for a grass fed dairy solution. Anyway, They tasted great. I am working on a solution for soaking. If i find one, I will re-post. If you have gluten allergies, I have a millet pancake recipe on my blog that is super tasty! Along with some muffins!
Thank you again for your time, from one NT mamma to Another! 🙂
I have just been diagnosed as having an intolerance to glutten and have been advised to eat millet, but am unable to find where to buy it. Please can you assist
Many thanks
Hi Linda,
You can find it at many health food stores here in the US, and I’ve even found it at regular store’s too in the bulk section. Ask around! If you can’t find it locally, you could try ordering it online too. Best of luck!
Here is a brand of millet flour, but they also have numerous gluten free dry mixes for muffins, etc. I have seen this is regular grocery stores but they tend to be limited to the variety they carry.
http://www.bobsredmill.com/millet-flour.html
Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods have numerous items that you could try, as well.
These biscuits are heavenly! I served them with black eyed peas and roasted broccoli/cherry tomatoes. Then, I served them again for breakfast with butter and honey. They are so versatile! The only modification that I made was adding 1/2 tsp baking soda in addition to the 3 (scant) tsp baking powder. I did this because I have read that it is a good idea to use a little soda in recipes that involve buttermilk. They turned out just perfect. Thank you!
These are very good! I cannot have buttermilk due to mold allergy. But these biscuits, made with regular milk and cooked in a glass baking dish, taste just like cornbread. Since we are allergic to corn, we are loving this discovery! Thanks for the recipe.
A great way to buy (inexpensive) millet flour is at you local Indian/South Asian market. The ladies who staff my store are amazingly helpful and patient answering all my questions. Millet flour is Bhajri Flour and is sold for about 1/4 the price you would pay in the health food store. You can buy it in packages from 1lb all the way up to 25lbs. It is a whole grain flour, however, so unless you use it within a couple weeks, it should be kept in the refrigerator or freezer. I get it 5lbs at a time because I don’t go to the Indian store very often and put it in the corner of my freezer in a tall square blue glass container that seals tightly. Blue blocks light that would cause nutrients to deteriorate. It keeps virtually indefinitely.
Hi Kimi, I just found your Millet biscuit recipe last night, and made two batches today. It is are so wonderful. I used one cup millet and one cup oat bran and a little honey, plus a tablespoon of homemade chili seasoning powder. They aren’t fragile at all and if you put mayo on the bottom they are perfect for sandwiches or hamburger buns. I am going to but these into freezer bags and into the freezer. Thank you so much for sharing….
I live in India and am a ‘guru’ on millet and guar. My latest project is diabetic biscuits. I buy millet seeds, they are very small. soak and germinate, dry after germination (sprout) and grind that into flur with a small kitchen blender – increases nutritional value. GUAR is not just a binder but is very important to ‘absorb’ sugar in food/digestion. BUT you shouldn’t use more than 2% in relation to millet. Margarine is good but one needs to know that the poild are not hydro etc. Thank you
I just made these super easy biscuits! I spooned the batter into a muffin tin, it made 12 perfect muffins! Same cook time, same temp. Next time, I think I’ll add some vanilla and maybe sugar or honey to the batter to sweeten them up just a bit.
Wow. These came out great!! I had to substitute almond milk w/ one teaspoon apple cider vinegar for buttermilk (son is dairy free), and had just one and a half cups of millet so did a half cup rice flour instead. To keep them from being crumbly, I added two teaspoons xanthan gum. The rule of thumb is one teaspoon xanthan gum for each cup of flour you put in the recipe. Hope this helps! They were not crumbly and super soft. I added two packets stevia for sweetness.
Hi, these sound deliciousI would love to try this recipe with a Nourishing Traditions twist. I just started making keifer and am wondering about using it to pre-soak the millet. Do you have any pointers as to what amounts to use in this type of variation, and also at what point to mix in the other ingredients? TIA!!
My daughter is allergic to eggs as well as gluten and I made these tonight with some trepidation – but they turned out great! I subbed 2 T ground flaxseed in 6T water for the eggs and added 1/2 teaspoon xantham gum. They held together great and had a good texture.
I made these this morning and LOVED them. I didn’t have buttermilk so I substituted with Plain Greek Yogurt. Perfect and very tasty!!!!
Thanks for sharing
Stacey
I wanted to thank you SO MUCH for this recipe. We had the biscuits with salads a couple weeks ago and I used them as a scone base this morning. I used to make a wheat scone all the time for my daughter, but she’s off wheat and refined sugar and kept asking me for scones. I just cut the salt in half and added a 1/4 honey to the milk/egg mixture and a handful of dried cranberries and lemon zest. They are wonderful! Not dry and SO tasty with my morning coffee.
Hi. I made it and it didn’t come out like yours at all. It was flat and so watery and had a bitter aftertaste. I had to substitute the buttermilk with a non-dairy homemade thing. So sad mine didn’t work out. What would you suggest I change? Thanks.
We are in Kenya and I can only find finger millet flour, which is very dark brown. So I used half rice flour and half finger millet. I also used camel’s milk with some Apple cider vinegar instead of the buttermilk. The “dough” was a bit sloppy, is that normal? I was worried it would all run together so I added a bit of cornstarch. Next time I will be brave and try without, though.
It was heavenly to have biscuits again!
I’ve made these 3 times, the first time they turned out great, the last 2 times they were so bitter they were virtually inedible. Help, what am I doing wrong? I have to substitute olive oil for butter and rice milk/vinegar for buttermilk but wouldn’t think that would make them bitter?
I made these for Valentines Day breakfast. Best GF biscuits I have tried so far! I followed the recipe except I am kind of a haphazard with my measurements and I added a little ground chia seeds. I also had to sub vinegar/milk since I didn’t have buttermilk. My dough was stiff enough that I could have rolled them out. I baked them in a muffin tin expecting them to flatten, but they kept the round shape of the scoop I used. Also, my butter was room temperature which may have helped. Very much the texture and taste of real biscuits! Next time I would add just a little sweetener to the dough and cut back on the amount of baking soda a tiny bit. Very easy to make!