Welcome to the summary page for FabulousFusionFood's Cook's Guide entry for Millet along with all the trcipes employing Millet presented on this site, with 86 recipes in total.

This is a continuation of an entire series of pages that will, I hope, allow my visitors to better navigate this site. As well as displaying recipes by name, country and region of origin I am now planning a whole series of pages where recipes can be located by meal type and main ingredient. This page gives a listing of all the Millet recipes added to this site.

These recipes, all contain Millet as a major wild food ingredient.



Millets represent a diverse and highly varied group of small-seeded grasses, widely grown around the world as cereal crops or grains for fodder and human food. Millets are true grasses and members of the PACMAD clade (they are sisters to the BOP clade which contains the rices wheats, barley and oats). Most millets belong to the Panicoideae subfamily with a few in the Chloridoideae subfamily. They are small-grained, annual, warm-weather cereals belonging to the grass family. They are highly tolerant of drought and other extreme weather conditions and have a similar nutrient content to other major cereals.

In terms of human nutrition, millets are important crops in the semi-arid tropics of Asia and Africa, especially in India, Mali, Nigeria, and Niger, with 97% of production in developing countries. The crop is favoured for its productivity and short growing season under hot dry conditions. The millets are sometimes understood to include the widely cultivated sorghum; apart from that, pearl millet is the most commonly cultivated of the millet.

Millets are also probably one of the first grains foraged by human hunter-gatherers. They may also be amongst the first grains purposely farmed by humans. They appear to have been consumed by humans for about 7,000 years and potentially had "a pivotal role in the rise of multi-crop agriculture and settled farming societies". Evidence of their use dates back to ancient civilizations such as those of China and India. Over time, millets have spread to other regions, including Africa, Europe, and the Americas, where they have been adapted to suit local growing conditions and culinary traditions. Current archaeobotanical evidence has demonstrated that foxtail millet (Setaria italica) and broomcorn millet (Panicum miliaceum) were both cultivated in northern China no later than

8000 cal. BP. Millets were also cultivated in Africa, the Middle East, and Europe around the same time. These early farmers discovered that millets were easy to

grow, had a short growing cycle, and could be stored for a long time. They also found that millets were highly nutritious and could sustain human life for extended periods.

In Africa, millets remain an important food source, mainly in the Sahel region where they are a staple crop. Millets are also grown in other parts of Africa. Tef and fonio are among those millets that were domesticated in the African continent and are still grown there almost exclusively, where teff, a type of millet, is used to make injera, a sourdough flatbread that is a national dish, and Fonio is considered to be the oldest West African cereal and its cultivation is thought to date back to 5000 BCE.

The word millet is derived via Old French millet, millot from Latin millium, 'millet', ultimately from the proto-Indo-European root *mele-, 'to crush'.

Taxonomy: The different species of millets are not all closely related. All are members of the family Poaceae (the grasses), but they belong to different tribes and subfamilies. Commonly cultivated millets are:

Eragrostideae tribe in the subfamily Chloridoideae:

    Eleusine coracana: Finger millet

    Eragrostis tef: Teff (often not considered to be a millet)

Paniceae tribe in the subfamily Panicoideae:

    Genus Panicum:

        Panicum miliaceum: Proso millet (common millet, broomcorn millet, hog millet, or white millet, also known as baragu in Kannada, panivaragu in Tamil)

        Panicum sumatrense: Little millet

        Panicum hirticaule: Sonoran millet, cultivated in the American Southwest

    Cenchrus americanus: Pearl millet

    Setaria italica: Foxtail millet, Italian millet, panic

    Genus Digitaria: of minor importance as crops

        Digitaria exilis: known as white fonio, fonio millet, and hungry rice or acha rice

        Digitaria iburua: Black fonio

        Digitaria compacta: Raishan, cultivated in the Khasi Hills of northeast India

        Digitaria sanguinalis: Polish millet

    Genus Echinochloa: collectively, the members of this genus are called barnyard grasses or barnyard millets

        Echinochloa esculenta: Japanese barnyard millet

        Echinochloa frumentacea: Indian barnyard millet

        Echinochloa stagnina: Burgu millet

        Echinochloa crus-galli: Common barnyard grass (or cockspur grass)

    Paspalum scrobiculatum: Kodo millet

    Genus Urochloa (formerly Brachiaria)

        Urochloa deflexa: Guinea millet

        Urochloa ramosa: Browntop millet, southern India

    Spodiopogon formosanus: Taiwan oil millet, endemic to Taiwan

Andropogoneae tribe, also in the subfamily Panicoideae:

    Sorghum bicolor: Sorghum; usually considered a separate cereal, but sometimes known as great millet

    Coix lacryma-jobi: Job's tears, also known as adlay millet

Per capita consumption of millets as food varies in different parts of the world, with consumption being the highest in Western Africa. Millet has local significance as a food in parts of some countries, such as China, India, Burma and North Korea.

Millet is a staple in the Sahel region of Africa, accounting for a large portion of total cereal food consumption in Burkina Faso, Chad and the Gambia. It can be ground and mixed with milk to make fura and brukina. Countries in Africa where millets are a major food source include Niger and Namibia where it forms over 65% of the cereals eaten; it is significant, too, in Mali, Senegal, Ethiopia, Nigeria and Uganda. Millet is important in the drier parts of many other countries, especially in eastern and central Africa, and in the northern coastal countries of western Africa. Fermented beverages are made with millet in the same regions.

In Ukraine, millet was historically a common ingredient in the diet of the Zaporozhian Cossacks, in the form of a porridge called kulish. This dish, primarily made with millet, served with stewed vegetables and meat, cooked in a cauldron, remains a part of modern Ukrainian cuisine. In Germany, it is eaten sweet, for example with milk and berries for breakfast. In Russia, millet porridge also remains common and is promoted for its health benefits. Millet porridge made with pumpkin is particularly common. In the Lipetsk Oblast, ritual and daily meals from millet include chichi (Russian: чичи), which are millet fritters.

Millet is commonly eaten in India and usually incorporated into dishes as a flour, although consumption is declining. In Karnataka, India, finger millet is made into ragi rotti flatbread and ragi mudde dough lumps. In the Himalayas, including in Nepal, Sikkim, and Darjeeling, millet is fermented into alcoholic beverages such as tongba and raksi. Millet is the main ingredient in bánh đa kê, a Vietnamese sweet snack. It contains a layer of smashed millet and mung bean topped with sliced dried coconut meat wrapped in a crunchy rice cake.

Note that the small grain millet, fonio is excluded from the list of recipes given below as fonio has its own page in this glossary.