Barnyard millet is the fastest-cooking of the minor millets — a quick, ancient cereal grass domesticated from barnyard grass whose loose, bristly seed head yields the smallest of grains, creamy white to pale grey once hulled. Naturally gluten-free, mild and faintly nutty, it is prized in India as sanwa or samak ki chawal, the "false rice" cooked in place of true grains during Hindu fasting days, and is a fast, drought-tolerant catch crop that matures in as little as six weeks.