I love Tuscan farro and white bean soup.. I first had it at a vineyard in Italy, where they were having a wine tasting a couple of years ago.

jude

I never even heard of farro until I read the attached column by the author Lisa Scottoline. Guess it's very high in carbs!

Here is a link that might be useful: Column on farro

Is this a whole grain (whole berry) version? There is also semi-pearled farro and cracked farro.

"FARRO" is rather nebulas in the world of grain and can be one of several grains, usually one of the early varieties of wheat, but often it's spelt, which also goes by the name dinkel in Germany, or can actually BE farrow. Spelt and farrow are very similar and often used one for the other.

Farro is one of those long-cooking grains and your research may have mentioned that. I'd suggest pre-soaking the grain for 6-12 hours then cooking it to shorten the cooking time. Use a 3:1 ratio (3 cups water per 1 cup farro). If the ambient temperature is 75-degrees F or warmer, soak it in the refrigerator.

Pressure-cooker - use 3 cups of water per cup of farro. Soak for 30-minutes before cooking at pressure for 45 minutes.

The risotto dish using farro also goes by the name farrotto.

The flavor is similar to wheat or barley. Recipes that use cooked whole wheat berries will also work for cooked farro.

You could always resort to Blender Waffles/Pancakes, which can be made with almost any wheat-type grain and rice. Link below. There are different versions of this recipe. Some don't require an overnight soak.

-Grainlady

Here is a link that might be useful: Blender Waffle/Pancakes

OK, I've inspected the package more carefully and it says it's pearled farro, and the instructions say it will cook in 15 minutes. So that is a relief!

Those pancakes look delicious! That's a great way to introduce this to my boy. :-)

As far as carbs go, according to the nutritional label, 1/4 cup has 35g of carbs, which seems to be in line with brown rice or barley... unless I didn't correctly read the info from the online USDA database. It does appear to be really high in protein and iron, which is a huge plus from my perspective.

I'm thinking I can easily substitute it into DH's favorite Beef Barley Soup.

Grainlady: I finally got all the parts to make the Blender whole grain waffles, and they are terrific! Thanks for sharing that recipe.

Farro is a wheat product....Giada made a very delicious looking salad using farro...

This Paula Wolfert recipe is good. I used canned garbanzos.

Here is a link that might be useful: Creamy Farro and Garbanzo Soup