I bought toasted buckwheat groats from Russia, cooked it, and it had a great nutty smell and was delicious.
Now, I can't get Russian ones, so I bought toasted buckwheat groats from American and Canadian sources. They look identical to the Russian ones, but have a nasty perfume-like smell which makes them almost inedible.
Incidentally, the perfume-like American groats are much less firm when cooked. If I'm not careful they turn into wallpaper paste. This never happened with the Russian buckwheat, even when I added too much water or cooked it too long.
Is this just another species, or is there some way to prep the buckwheat beforehand that the Russian company did that I don't know about?
