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Vrat ke chawal, sama ke chawal, or sama rice is most frequently made during Hindu festivals and auspicious periods of the Hindu calendar like Navratri, Ekadashi, Mahashivratri, Jaya Parvati vrat, and Janmashtami as a recipe for fast (vrat or upvas) when people abstain from cereal grains, and also avoid onion and garlic.
The name is misleading, however. Sama rice or samak rice, is not rice, but barnyard millet, a gluten-free, fibre-rich, and nutritious seed. It is a tiny, round, cream-coloured grain (sama seeds or samo seeds), smaller than the rice grain. It tastes similar to broken rice and has a texture like that of semolina (rava) and broken wheat (daliya), or even couscous. When cooked, it does not separate into individual grains like long-grained rice, but tends to clump together like upma. See our samak rice recipe method to see how to keep the grains separate.
