The Pantry / Finger Millet
Finger Millet
Eleusine coracana · kodo · ragi · mandua
The grain that grows where the rice will not.
What it is
Finger millet is a small reddish-brown grain, named for the way its seed heads splay like fingers. Milled whole, bran and all, it gives a flour the colour of wet clay and a flavour that is nutty and faintly earthy. It cooks into something far denser than wheat or maize, and that density is the property the hills want, a mass filling out of proportion to its volume.
Where it comes from
Domesticated in the Ethiopian highlands and carried to India thousands of years ago, where it became the staple of hill and dryland farming from Uttarakhand to Karnataka. In Nepal it is kodo, the grain of the middle hills, and the base of dhido.
What it's called
Kodo (Nepali) · ragi (Kannada and Hindi) · mandua (Garhwali and Kumaoni) · finger millet. Botanically Eleusine coracana.
In the kitchen
Sprinkled into boiling salted water in three stages and beaten hard with a wooden spoon between each, pressing the mass against the side of the pan. After about twelve minutes it goes from loose and sticky to firm and glossy and pulls away from the pan in one piece. That is dhido, served in a single mound and eaten by pinching off pieces with the fingers. The pan must stay on the heat the whole time you beat it.
What we know about the claims
Unusually high in calcium for a cereal and naturally gluten-free, with a low glycaemic index that has made it fashionable again in Indian cities after decades of being dismissed as poor people's food. The nutrition case here is genuinely strong.
Choosing and buying
Sold as ragi flour or ragi atta at any South Asian grocer in the UK and US, cheaply. Fine maize flour, sold as makai ko pitho or as fine polenta, is the other correct choice and is often mixed half and half with the millet. Buckwheat flour makes the version eaten higher up.