Groat

Groat may refer to:

See also

Groat (coin)

The groat is the traditional name of a long-defunct English silver coin worth four English pennies, and also a Scottish coin originally worth fourpence, with later issues being valued at eightpence and one shilling.

Name

The name has also been applied to any thick or large coin, such as the Groschen (grosso), a silver coin issued by Tyrol in 1271 and Venice in the 13th century, which was the first of this general size to circulate in the Holy Roman Empire and other parts of Europe. The immediate ancestor to the groat was the French gros tournois or groat of Tours, which was known as the groot (Dutch for "great" or "large") in the Netherlands.

The name groat also refers to a range of other European coins such as those of the Italian peninsula known as a grosso including the grosso of Venice and the Kraków grosz. Marco Polo referred to the groat in recounts of his travels to East Asia when describing the currencies of the Yuan Empire. His descriptions were based on the conversion of 1 bezant = 20 groats = 133⅓ tornesel.

Groat (grain)

Groats (or in some cases, "berries") are the hulled kernels of various cereal grains such as oat, wheat, and rye. Groats are whole grains that include the cereal germ and fiber-rich bran portion of the grain as well as the endosperm (which is the usual product of milling).

Groats can also be produced from pseudocereal seeds such as buckwheat.

Culinary uses

Groats are nutritious but hard to chew, so they are often soaked before cooking. Groats are used in soups and porridges: steel-cut oats is simply another name for sliced oat groats.

Groats of many cereals are the basis of kasha, a porridge-like staple meal of Eastern Europe and Eurasia. In North America kasha or kashi usually refers to roasted buckwheat groats in particular.

In North India, wheat groats are known as dalia and are commonly prepared with milk into a sweet porridge or with vegetables and spices into salty preparations.

Parboiled and cut durum wheat groats, known as bulgur, are an essential ingredient of many Middle Eastern dishes such as mansaf and tabbouleh.