Amaranth

Drop a handful of amaranth flour into a bowl and you’ll see a finely ground powder that’s the color of beach sand, pale beige with a hint of yellow. Its fragrance is strong and unique, grassy with subtle undertones of chalk or stone, more like hay than a freshly mown lawn. Frankly, it can be off-putting at first, but it mellows nicely when paired with other equally bold flavors.

Despite its grassiness, amaranth is neither a grass nor a cereal grain but a leafy and often very colorful plant prized as much for its edible greenery as for its abundant seeds. It’s those seeds—a single amaranth plant is capable of producing about 50,000 of them—that are ground to make the flour.