I cooked up some kodo millet (Paspalum scrobiculatum) for demo last May (photo) and again last week to compare taste with proso millet (Panicum miliaceum). As far as I know, kodo millet is not grown at all as a crop in North America. In fact, it apparently is considered a weed. Curiously, although the plant originated in Africa, it is a food crop only in parts of South and Southeast Asia. The kodo millet I cooked came from India, and was packaged under one of several Indian labels marketing this grain: Incept. I used a simple automatic rice cooker and it cooked fine - easy to dish out (like rice) and break up. The grains are about the size of proso, but the color of what I had was a light brown (main varieties of proso are yellow). I found kodo's taste to be mild. Oddly, the word that came to mind was "mature" (you can see why I'm not a food writer). When I did a taste test with proso the other day, I found the latter also mild but having that faintly "nutty" taste that is often mentioned. I had to think about it, but there was slightly more going on with proso on taste buds on the side and middle of my tongue. Kodo seemed more subtle, in a comparison of subtle tastes. This taste comparison experience has me thinking that it would be interesting to have some culinary experts - real food writers - do blind taste tests of cooked millets, and perhaps some baked goods or porridges made with them, in order to get some taste characterizations useful for discussion of millets' unique characteristics. From what I've seen in some literature (but not an actual study of that literature), tests of how people react to the taste of millets in various forms and products are not rare. However, I don't recall seeing anything where two or more millets were evaluated for taste in comparison to each other. Such comparisons might be especially useful in markets where millets in general are not well known, and there is no culinary experience with the range of types of millets. DO, EL, MI, US
