Amazing Amaranth

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Cleaning the Seeds

I thoroughly enjoy eating amaranth greens and watching the crop grow in the garden throughout the summer, but separating seed from chaff is my favorite part of growing grain amaranth. A blend of art and science, seed cleaning can be practiced for a lifetime with steady improvement, yet never fully mastered. To me, the primal rhythms of hand threshing and winnowing evoke a connection to ancient Aztec farmers and to indigenous farmers everywhere.

You can clean the seeds in many ways. If you’ve gone the route of drying the whole flower tops, the first job is to reduce the bulk to a manageable size while dislodging the seeds. (If you’ve gone a different route, begin where it seems appropriate for the material that you’ve collected.)

Start by dancing. Crush the brittle plants by treading on them with clean shoes in a large tub, between tarps or in a pillowcase or sack. Once all the plants are crushed, rub them through a one-fourth-inch screen to remove the large debris and further break down the chaff. (Use gloves!) You also can swirl seeds and chaff in a large, shallow basket or bowl. The seeds will sink, and rough chaff can be skimmed off. Once you’ve removed most of the larger chaff, try sifting through a smaller screen (common window screen will work) or try winnowing with the wind

You can winnow on a breezy day, but it is somewhat easier and more consistent to use a box fan. The basic idea is to drop the seed/chaff mixture slowly before the wind (real or fan-made). The seeds will fall faster than the chaff, allowing you to catch them while the chaff blows away.

Three square tubs, sitting side by side, are useful for catching the seeds as they fall. The closest tub will catch the cleanest seeds and so forth. You may need to adjust the fan speed and distance away from the tubs, and repeat the process a few times to get pure seed in the first tub.

Once you achieve a batch of clean seed, you can then move on to clean the seed-rich mixture from the other two tubs until you reach a point of diminishing returns.

Another method, which can be good for quickly making small batches, is to pour the mixture between two shallow bowls in the breeze, adjusting them so the bottom bowl catches the seeds while the chaff blows away. A final cleaning can be done by repeatedly swirling the seeds in a bowl, allowing the chaff to rise to the top, then gently blowing it off. Again, work over a large tarp in case too much seed gets away from you. There are dozens of other ways to extract the seeds, so experiment! With careful observation and a little perseverance, you’ll be cleaning seeds like an Aztec farmer in no time.

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