Pocono Cream of Buckwheat is a hot cereal of buckwheat groats stone ground to a fine meal and cooked on the stovetop into a smooth porridge. Despite the name, buckwheat is a seed rather than a wheat product, the fruit seed of a plant related to rhubarb and sorrel, and the cooked cereal carries an earthy, faintly nutty flavor of its own.

It comes from The Birkett Mills in Penn Yan, New York, which has been milling buckwheat in the Finger Lakes since 1797 and still stone grinds it. Pocono is the brand most American shoppers have seen on the hot cereal shelf. The meal is sold raw and needs to be cooked through before it is eaten.

Cooked thick, it eats as a breakfast porridge with maple syrup, butter, or fruit stirred in; cooked looser it makes a base under a poached egg. Cooks also take it past breakfast, using it to thicken soups and stews or working it into stuffings and savory casseroles. The 13 oz box covers a run of weekday breakfasts.

Browse more breakfast foods and cereal at The Great Shoppe.