Job's Tears -- coix lacryma-jobi -- Adlay -- I have questions

The new Baker's Creek's seed catalog hit my mailbox and I have been reading it.  This is always dangerous.

One of the items in it is Job's Tears, described thusly and with a pretty tempting picture:

Is it an herb, grain, vegetable, or ornamental bead? This easy-to-grow plant is all these things and more! With graceful and flowing miniature corn-type bladed leaves, sturdy stalks, delicate inconspicuous drooping flowers, and ornamental pea-like seeds, Job’s Tears adds a stunning green filler to cut flower displays. A grain-bearing plant useful for food, to make necklaces, rosary beads, and even traditionally in folk medicine for arthritis and to remove heat! Once the husk has been removed for cooking, the grains look more like oversized pearl barley. Great in brothy dishes and traditional Asian drinks, Job’s Tears provides a chewy, mildly sweet, and earthy flavor that has caught the eye of discerning cooks. It has lovingly been called by cookbook authors “the next cult gluten-free grain” and an “unusual, versatile, and beneficial little weirdo.”

This YouTube video shows that the wide variety of pretty colors is present when the seeds are still on the plant:



My food interest is the "great in brothy dishes" bit -- I am always making vegetable soups and having a handful of largy chewy grains to throw in each batch would be awesome.  An attractive grain plant to grow is obviously not unwelcome either and I have crafters in my life who would not mind pretty free beads.  

But the part I'm not clear on is this: is there a necessary hand-threshing step between those pretty colored beadlike grains we see on the plant and in the Baker's Creek photo, and the food grain I would be throwing in my soup pot?  Google and YouTube are emphatically not answering this question!  The food grain version of this sold in 1lb bags in Asian groceries is a pretty pearly white, but is that because of a machine polishing step? Or is there a husk or hull that must be removed by hand (or machine) before human consumption?

What I'm trying to figure out is whether growing this stuff on a small home scale is reasonable or practical or fun or worthwhile.  If I order fifteen seeds from Baker's Creek, and get a yield on the order of a few cups or a few quarts, is it only useful for beads?  Will I be tearing husks/hulls off, one-by-one, with tweezers, before throwing them in my soup?  Or is it edible/cookable as it comes off the plant?

I would be delighted to hear from anybody who has grown and eaten this stuff as to what the processing steps are.  Thanks!

I would also like to know more about Job's Tears.  Some years ago, I looked into it as a crop for a marshy, tropical region.  I remember reading that there were different cultivars.  One, bred as a food crop allegedly more readily released from the hull, unlike the varieties I'd seen growing around.  I was keen to find some of this variety to try, but mostly came up empty.  Someone suggested combing packages of it to find some missed in the hulling that might germinate.  

I know from eating it in Korea that they are definitely hulled like barley.

There appear to be two types, a hard-hull type (the bead ones, a wild variety, var lacryma-jobi) and a soft-hull type (that you can eat as grain or brew with, var ma-yuen).

I am already growing the wild variety (and doing nothing with it), I now have to find the edible one.
Thanks.

But that's the question, isn't it?  Are the bead types purely decorative, or is it just a matter of threshing them to achieve edibility?  Certainly the Baker's Creek listing seems to suggest that they think they're selling a product that's at once edible and decorative.  (But of course they may be wrong.)  

There are a lot of YouTube videos, very few in English.  A few show the colorful grains on the plant, most show a more uniform grain that's described as being grey or brown.  (I'm color vision impaired, so don't ask me.)  There doesn't appear to be enough use of this plant in the English speaking world for the question to have been hashed out in an accessible way anywhere that I can find.  

Dan, I had a similar reaction when receiving my Baker Creek catalog too a few weeks ago. I wanted to plant Job's Tear for the "beads" so I was excited. Then I was very intrigued that it is used for food. I began my research using all the various names I was coming across. I have some "beads" from a broken necklace. My husband used pliers to crack one open. The little morsel of meat had a pleasant nutty grain flavor. Knowing it cracked like a pecan, I began looking for dehullers. What I found designed for this pretty plant is in China either commercially or expensive individual units from the Larger brand in China. That was not what I wanted. Evidently, the US is behind in creating grain processing appliances for the homestead. I say all this to say one company, Grainmaker, does have a dehuller and Mills for home use. It is a little pricey, but selling beads, jewelry, and flour from this cute little grain may recoup the cost. Also, upon reading further, it seems all seed bearing plants are prohibited from entering the US due to possible invasiveness and disease. All foods containing seeds are also irradiated at customs port of entry to prevent growth and possible contamination. It's possible my facts are wrong but that's what I found this far. Hope it helps! From a soon to be homesteader.

Paula, Welcome to permies. Your research got a little further than mine did -- good job!  

Yes, the Grainmaker products look incredibly solid, though I agree it may be too expensive for casual home use.  As you mention, though, the expense (deductible!) could be easily justified by any domestic-industrial entrepreneurial scheme.  

Here are the links I found: a $275 huller kit for an up-engineered $675 hand-cranked grain mill -- there's a .pdf brochure here.  They say the dehuller works on "many grains" but I still couldn't find with Google any specific discussion of using it on the Job's Tears.  Did you find somebody who was using it for that?

Hello and thanks. Glad I found this site. To answer your question, no I haven't found a specific quote about adlay, job's tears, or croix seed. What I did find was several about "hard shell" grains. When looking up the various hard shelled/hulled grains, they all seem to be similar size. I am using deductive reasoning that if the dehuller was made for those smaller grains, it in theory should work on Job's Tears since it is if similar size and hardness.

I agree with your reasoning and honestly those mills look like they could make iron filings out of steel BB shot.  However I don't mind saying I would sure rather have some other intrepid pilgrim shell out the thousand bucks and make the experiment with respect to any one particular grain before I bought it for that specific purpose!

Having said that, I can think of half a dozen different reasons why, if I had a thousand bucks I wasn't using, I'd purely admire to own that unit anyway...

Absolutely! That's a big expense. We just bought our property. Just call us late in life bloomers. Our money at first will go into first things first like fencing, septic system, garage and workshop  etc. I want to grow that pretty ruby buckwheat too. Not a lot, just a bit to see how it goes. That $1000 luxury will be on down the road some. But I am still going to keep doing research.

I never really found a solid answer about the nature of this grain as it comes off the plant, or about the scope and difficulty of the presumed-necessary threshing operation.  However, by serendipity I found something very close to an answer to my original question on the Job's Tears page at the Experimental Farm Network, where they have this to say:

Job's Tears (called Hato Mugi, in Japanese) is an uncommon grain eaten traditionally from Africa to Japan. It is believed to originate in India, but is most popular as food and medicine in China and Japan. Most Job's Tears grown in this country is of the non-domesticated type, with rock-hard shells that can only be cracked with pliers or a hammer. The grain inside is edible, but very hard to get at. The domesticated "ma-yuen" type (Coix lacryma-jobi var. ma-yuen) can be cracked open with a couple strong human fingers or a normal threshing machine.

That confirms what I suspected all along (that the colorful decorative type sold by Bakers Creek and elsewhere is not easily useful as a food grain) while explaining the mystery of this stuff existing as an important food crop in Asia.

I have about a dozen samples of Job's Tears from a variety of sources, but only one of them is the grain type. I wasn't able to plant them this year, but it sounds like there might be a market if I can grow them out enough?

With the bead-type, it might be possible to remove the hulls with something similar to a rock polisher. Tumble them dry in a bucket with something abrasive for a few hours. Or maybe have some kind of abrasive surface attached to the insides of the bucket itself? Not sure. It's one of those things I keep hoping to experiment with, but other stuff keeps taking priority.

Here's a video I was watching this morning that got me interested.

Trade Winds Fruit is selling seeds.

Greg Martin wrote:Here's a video I was watching this morning that got me interested.

I love that entire genre of carefully-curated museum-quality pastoralism.  I don't necessarily believe all that I see, but it's fun to watch.  Isn't that little village perched among hilly fields on the banks of a cascading series of waterfalls an entire series of picture postcards just waiting to be published?

I am still interested in the food qualities (if any) of the colorful varieties; the version grown as a primary grain crop looks very different.  I also tried to take note of the processing steps in that video, from initial threshing in the field, to a drying floor at home, into a domestic machine that was either a first winnowing pass or a dehulling step, then into a community machine that was either further winnowing or cracking/dehulling plus winnowing (I wish the functions of the two machines were easier to discern!) then another drying step at home, plus a hand-screening and sorting into two size grades, followed by careful washing before cooking.  Very much like any other food grain, perhaps harder than some, easier than others.

Hi, I bought some jobs tears from baker creek and after two years of growing them finally found out that they are the wrong type. I was wondering if you tell me where you got the correct seeds that are meant for grains.

Ellendra Nauriel wrote: Tumble them dry in a bucket with something abrasive for a few hours. Or maybe have some kind of abrasive surface attached to the insides of the bucket itself? Not sure.

Resurrecting an old thread because I came across new information. It turns out my "abrasive bucket" idea wasn't as far off the mark as I thought.

I was able to get a good look at rice polisher recently. The way it works was surprisingly simple. It's just a heavy-duty screen, shaped like a bowl, inside a larger container. The rice is put in the screened bowl, and spun at high speed. The friction of the rice against the screen is all it takes for the bran to flake off, and in less time than I would've expected! According to the description, this same machine also works for pearling barley, or removing some or all of the bran from other grains like wheat or rye. (This also seems useful if you ever want to make whiter flour from home-grown grains.)

I don't know if the rice polisher I saw is strong enough to handle Job's Tears, but it seems like the same principle could be applied. Take a heavy-duty screen, or a steel pipe with a gazillion holes drilled into it, and spin the grain in it at high speed. With the right setup you could probably even do it with pedal-power, since it takes speed more than torque.

How about roasting the seeds lightly to make the hull brittle? I've been experimenting a bit with eating wild Leymus arenarius grain, and roasting does seem to make de-hulling easier. From what I've heard, this is how people used to process oats back in the day. Another thing I've been experimenting with is soaking the grain, followed by throwing them in a hot pan, hoping that the water between the hull and the grain will flash-boil and create a pressure that helps separating them. From my limited experiments, it seems to hold some promise. Maybe this would be doable for Job's Tears as well?

I'll add to this old thread. After growing this for a few years in Michigan (it's now going somewhat feral on my property) I can say it's functional if you get good at growing it. The grain hull is super hard, like flint corn. I'd recommend fermenting it (12-24 hours in water), roasting it, or both. That seemed to make the hull weak enough to be easily enough chewed. Cooking further softened them.

Jordy, is it surviving winters for you or is it going to seed in one year and self seeding?

Greg Martin wrote:Jordy, is it surviving winters for you or is it going to seed in one year and self seeding?

It completely dies in the fall and has seeded itself.

Jordy Buck wrote:I'll add to this old thread. After growing this for a few years in Michigan (it's now going somewhat feral on my property) I can say it's functional if you get good at growing it. The grain hull is super hard, like flint corn. I'd recommend fermenting it (12-24 hours in water), roasting it, or both. That seemed to make the hull weak enough to be easily enough chewed. Cooking further softened them.

Watching NHK World television on one of the public channels here in California, I saw a show about a married couple employed at a special garden in Japan for medicinal plants that was 300 years old. Part of the segment showed Jobe's Tears being grown and harvested. The man stripped a small handful from the plant and brought it home. He put them in a regular blender and buzzed it up for a few pulses, took the result outside and winnowed by gently tossing and catching in the bowl he used, the hulls blew away in the gentle breeze. Then he and his wife boiled the remainder in a cloth pouch and had it as tea. He was also sprouting ginseng and tending some plants at home for his 'work'. He and his wife were in their mid eighties!