Dr. Greger in the Kitchen: Cran-Chocolate Pomegranate BROL Bowl

Below is an approximation of this video’s audio content. To see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, and quotes to which Dr. Greger may be referring, watch the above video.

Welcome to my new Seattle home. You know, I did all my other cooking videos at a friend’s house because he had a really cool kitchen, and I had a really crappy kitchen. But now, oh, my God, look— I’ve got an island, I’ve got counter space, I’ve got a pantry. In fact, I don’t have a pantry; I have a sound booth. Check this out. This is where you hear all the videos this year; thanks to the pandemic I’m no longer in the studio. Check it out. I’m actually in a closet/coffin.

Anyway, okay. I became obsessed with this new breakfast, so I want to share with everybody. It starts with my prebiotic mix. In all my research trying to find out what is best for our good gut bugs to feed them, because it impacts through all of our organ systems. We’ve got loads of videos on that. Let me just cut straight to the cooking.

We have oat groats, right? These are steel cut oats that haven’t been cut, so uncut oats…oat groats. And we have barley groats. And you see these are actually purple barley groats, purple or black barley. A little more expensive, like $6 bucks a pound. I splurge and go for it. And then we have rye berries, also known as rye groats. This is like the original BROL I talked about in “How Not to Diet.” BROL stands for Barley, Rye, Oats, and then Lentils. I’ve got the lentils elsewhere. But if you want to make it gluten-free, then you can go oats and sorghum and millet.

You say, wait a second; that doesn’t look like millet. Millet is not actually a thing. Millet is a catch-all term for any small grain, so there’s dozens of types of millets. What we typically think of millet is pearl millet. This is something called finger millet. I’ve got a bunch of videos coming both on sorghum and on millet. Barnyard millet, Foxtail millet, Kodo millet, all sorts of great millets. They’re all from different plants and they all have different nutrients and clinical effects. Anyway, the millet’s expensive. Millet’s like $8 bucks.

Okay, so I just did an unimaginative one to one to one to one ratio. We shake it up, shake it up, shake, shake, shake it up. And then pressure cook. Go over here. Oh, first I have to clean out my Instant Pot—I’ve been air frying some tempeh. It’s basically two to one water to prebiotic mix. So we’re going to do, I batch cook, I don’t know, let’s use a cup and two cups of water. And my Instant Pot just automatically does… when I put pressure cook on, mine starts at 30, so I just do 30. Maybe there’s some better time.

Okay, let’s do some lentils. The house actually came with an extra pressure cooker, so now I’ve got two, so I can make them at the same time. Ah, lentils. All right, these are the black Beluga lentils. See how teeny they are. And so the surface area to volume ratio is high, and most of the nutrients are concentrated in the peel. Oh, let me—I’m going to do half a cup of lentils to a cup of water. I think in the book I actually talked about making the lentils with the groats, but they get too mushy, so I like to cook them separately. All right. And we’re going to just steam for one minute. High-pressure steaming for one minute, and then just let it naturally pressure release. And then we’ll mix it all together and we will put all the yummy ingredients in.

I was going to wait for the groats to get done, but I realized of course I have groats in my fridge because, of course, I always have groats in my fridge. So ready for a sneak peek at Dr. Greger’s refrigerator? This is—let’s see what we have in here. Way too much hot sauce. Kale, kale, beans, groats, turmeric, lots of fruit, lots of greens, lots of sweet potatoes. Oh, hot peppers in the back there, really nice. Some miso, some tahini. And, of course, lots of fruit, tortillas, lots of greens, you know, typical.

This is actually what it looks like. It’s not very pretty. This is what it looks like when it’s made, although I ran out of sorghum, but you won’t be able to tell. So I’m now going to scoop— let me see, how much is this? About this much, hmm? Um, and when it’s cold, I actually warm it up a little bit. So I’m going to nuke it for 30 seconds. All right, microwaved for 30 seconds. Or you can use it hot and steamy out of the pressure cooker.

Okay, pomegranate time. You cut along the equator, just cut through the outer peel here. Just kind of twist it open. Look at the gorgeous little ruby red gems. All right, and then are you ready to whack your pomegranate? Big heavy spoon. Shake it up, splat, shake it up, splat… As you can see, there’s just a flood of little pomegranate arils going through. You probably can’t hear me because I’m whacking the pomegranate. See, this does a pretty good job. Whack a little on the side. Don’t hurt your fingers. All right, pretty good. You may want to cut off this little end here so little pieces don’t get in your stuff. Take that, pomegranate! Ta-da! There sometimes will be little white bits here. You can throw those away, depending on how much, they are just a little bitter—oh, it looks like a blood splat.

All right, then you wash your hands off, and don’t do this with a dress shirt on. Ha! Now put in some cocoa. This is Ghirardelli’s Sunrise Cocoa. It’s my favorite in the whole wide world. As you can see it’s super dark, super dutched to heck, which means a lot of nutrients, but oh, it tastes so good. OK, I’m going to put about a tablespoon in, and that’s flax seeds and pumpkin seeds. Add some walnuts. And then chocolate vinegar, dark chocolate Balsamic vinegar.

Oh, yeah! Now to moisten it up, if you really want to be indulgent, you can use an unsweetened yogurt. But I haven’t been able to find a good unsweetened soy yogurt, but there’s a cashew and an almond on the market. Or just use some unsweetened soy milk. Here’s what I’m going to do. And then: ta-da! That’s it. Let’s mix it up. This is what it looks like. It doesn’t look very exciting, but the yogurt gives it a nice chocolate pudding kind of thing.

All right, and then what’s missing? Dark green leafy vegetables. MINT! Unfortunately I don’t have any mint. I’m cheating. I have some lemon balm here. I have no idea if that’s going to taste any good, but it’s from the mint family, and so let’s put that on and make it look pretty. Trying to think if I’ve forgotten anything. That’s what it looks like. Looks kind of like a murder scene theme. But all right. There’s creamy chocolate, and then you get these little stabs of sweetness from the pomegranate.

Oh, my God, I forgot a key ingredient. I forgot the cranberries! It’s in the title! And that’s because I can’t find cranberries anymore. I was all excited during the holiday season… cranberries all the time. I can’t even find frozen cranberries. Darn it. Anyway, so normally what I’d do is put a handful of fresh cranberries in, or a handful of frozen, which you can put with the cold groats that you have stored up for the week, and when you microwave it, it will defrost enough. So anyway, so then you get not only these bursts of sweet pomegranate, but then you get this like sour-tart cranberry thing. It’s awesome. Trust me. And hopefully I can find cranberries soon.

I love this so much. If you want, ah—I should bring my cookbook out. And if you want more recipes, we have a new recipe page on NutritionFacts.org and, of course, my How Not to Diet Cookbook. Check it out at your local library, or if you buy it, know that all the proceeds from all the sales from all my books, including this one, are all donated to charity.

Please consider volunteering to help out on the site.

Motion graphics by Avocado Video

• barley
• breakfast
• chocolate
• cranberries
• Daily Dozen
• grains
• How Not to Diet
• lentils
• oats
• recipes
• rye