Buckwheat in France: where to buy it, what it's called, what to use instead

Is there buckwheat in France, and what is it called?

There is. Both the plant and the groats are sarrasin in French, and in Brittany and on flour packs you’ll also see blé noir, although buckwheat has nothing to do with wheat (blé): French Wikipedia points out that it isn’t even a cereal and has no gluten in it. Our brown yadritsa, the whole toasted groats, is sold under the words kasha, sarrasin grillé or torréfié. If a pack of groats has none of those words on it, what’s inside is hulled but untoasted buckwheat, the kind we’d call green.

Producers don’t hide the difference. Sabarot describes kasha as hulled, toasted buckwheat with a light hint of chestnut and smoke. Markal adds that the grains stay “bien séparées”, meaning the kasha comes out fluffy rather than mushy. And Sabarot also sells a separate 1 kg pack of “Sarrasin non grillé”: the ingredients say simply “Sarrasin décortiqué”, the taste is mild with a nutty note, and it cooks in 15-20 minutes.

How do you find our buckwheat on the shelf and not buy pancakes by mistake?

Look for the words grillé, kasha or torréfié: if one of them is on a pack of groats, the brown buckwheat you know is inside. Anything else that mentions sarrasin or blé noir could just as easily turn out to be flour, flakes, pancakes or even tea.

• Galettes de sarrasin and galettes de blé noir are ready-made Breton pancakes of buckwheat flour. They live in the chiller or the freezer, like the 300 g “Galettes de Sarrasin préparées en Bretagne” at Carrefour.
• Farine de sarrasin is flour. Flocons and pétales de sarrasin are flakes, and the pétales are made from flour: a breakfast cereal to have with milk.
• Read flakes de sarrasin labels especially carefully. The Bio Par Nature ones in the Intermarché catalogue are 60.2% maize flour and only 32.4% buckwheat flour.
• Thé de sarrasin grillé, also called sobacha, is brewed like tea. The words “sarrasin grillé” on that pack don’t make it groats.
• On the E.Leclerc website, Vilmorin’s “Sarrasin bio” in a 375 g box sits in the garden section, next to the fertilisers. That’s seed for green manure, the kind you sow in a vegetable bed.

In a Polish or Eastern European shop you may come across a Polish pack. Kasza gryczana prażona is toasted, so that’s our yadritsa. Nieprażona (also sold as biała or zwykła) is untoasted. And kasza krakowska is finely cut groats, made from untoasted buckwheat according to Polish Wikipedia, and it won’t cook into fluffy kasha.

In the product listings we found, buckwheat mostly comes in 400-500 g packs, less often in 250-300 g, 750 g (Jardin Bio étic at Carrefour) or a kilo (Sabarot, Markal), and almost always labelled bio. The origin is on the pack or the product page: “Originaire de Lituanie” on Sabarot’s loose kasha at Biocoop, “Europe de l’Est” on La Vie Claire’s kasha, and Europe, packed in the Isère, for Priméal.

Be careful with gluten. Buckwheat itself has none, but factories often handle cereals that do: Sabarot warns on its kasha pack that the same workshop sometimes handles cereals containing gluten, soya or sesame, and Celnat mentions possible traces on its flakes. If you have coeliac disease, read the small print.

What can you use instead of buckwheat, and when doesn’t it work?

Usually there’s nothing to replace: kasha is our yadritsa, and you cook it the same way, one volume of groats to two volumes of salted boiling water (that’s Celnat’s advice). Found only the untoasted kind? You can toast it yourself. What you can’t do is make fluffy buckwheat out of flour or flakes.

Cooking times vary by brand. Celnat says about 10 minutes on a very low heat, Sabarot’s loose kasha at Biocoop takes 7-10 minutes, and the pack from the same brand says 15.

If all the shop had was sarrasin décortiqué and you want the familiar taste, take a dry frying pan with no oil (cast iron is ideal) and get it good and hot. Once the grains start to crackle, keep them on a medium heat for another minute or two, stirring, until they turn brown. Smell burning? Take them off straight away. Let the groats cool in the open air for about an hour before you tip them into a jar.

Beyond that, it depends on what you’re cooking:

• Buckwheat with milk and sweet porridge. The same kasha works: its product page on the Biocoop site suggests it for a sweet breakfast or in savoury dishes. For quick porridge there are flocons de sarrasin (Celnat, Priméal, Terres et Céréales). Celnat’s method: 4 tablespoons per person in 100 ml of boiling water, simmer for 5 minutes, then 2 more minutes standing off the heat. You won’t get a fluffy side dish out of flakes.
• Blini and pancakes. You need farine de sarrasin or farine de blé noir, for example Treblec, Francine or Auchan Cultivons le Bon; Breton buckwheat flour carries an IGP label. Celnat’s website has a recipe for “Blinis de sarrasin” with 120 g of flour. Bread and pasta from buckwheat flour alone are hard going, because it has no gluten.
• Golubtsy (stuffed cabbage rolls), stuffed peppers, soup. All of these are made with kasha. Celnat suggests it as a stuffing for cabbage, courgettes and pumpkin, and Markal has peppers with mushrooms (50 g of kasha per pepper) and a puréed carrot soup with 150 g of kasha.
• Grechaniki (buckwheat patties) and cutlets. Kasha plus a little buckwheat flour to bind them. Markal’s patties use 120 g of kasha, 120 g of bulgur, 100 g of flour and 3 eggs.
• Sprouting. Only untoasted groats, sarrasin décortiqué or non grillé. Toasted kasha won’t sprout.
• Ground buckwheat for a children’s porridge. The nearest thing is Celnat’s crème de sarrasin: its 2013 product page describes a very fine, pre-steamed buckwheat flour, 4 tablespoons to 500 ml of water. But on 6 October 2026 Celnat’s page for it wouldn’t open (a 404 error), so we don’t know whether it’s still on sale. There’s also a children’s bouillie de sarrasin from Sunval.
• No buckwheat at all. As a side dish, quinoa will get you out of a hole. It isn’t a cereal either, but it’s a different plant with a different taste. Usually you can do without a substitute, though: kasha is in the ordinary chains.

How much does buckwheat cost in France?

A rough figure for 2026: about €5 a kilo, with prices running from €4 to €8. That’s 18 prices from 6 online shops selling Russian food, as listed on the shops’ websites on 17 October 2026, delivery not included. We don’t quote supermarket prices. Shop prices change, so take it as a ballpark rather than a price list.

Where can you buy buckwheat in the South of France?

Among the Russian and Eastern European shops of the South, we’ve confirmed buckwheat in Marseille, Nîmes and Perpignan. In Montpellier, Nice and Toulouse we couldn’t confirm it, so there an ordinary supermarket or an organic shop is the safer bet. The addresses are in our directory of Russian shops, with hours wherever we managed to confirm them.

• Marseille. Both Anahit shops, at 11-13 boulevard de la Liberté and at 165 boulevard de Pont de Vivaux, and the Polish Delicepol (Sklep Polski) at 5 place Pierre Roux. In Anahit’s catalogue the buckwheat is labelled “Sarrasin (Grechka) 1kg - ANAHIT”, next to “Sarrasin 800g-JITNICA” and “Graine de sarrasin 1kg-SUNTAT”.
• Nîmes. Matrochka at 41 boulevard Gambetta.
• Perpignan. Alenka at 35 boulevard Félix Mercader and Mriya (Мрія) at 2 rue Pascal-Marie Agasse.

In Montpellier we haven’t confirmed buckwheat in any of the shops on our list. Épicerie Arménie at 5 rue Anatole France (a community partner, we shop there ourselves) stocks tvorog, kefir, pelmeni and khinkali: that’s how the owner described the range in September 2026. Ask about buckwheat in the shop, and in the chat while you’re at it, in case someone has seen it this week. The city’s other addresses are on the Russian shops in Montpellier page.

It’s the same story in Nice and Toulouse. There are shops (Nice, Toulouse), but we haven’t confirmed buckwheat in them. That doesn’t mean it isn’t there; just ask in the chat before you make the trip.

For supermarkets we went through the online catalogues, not the actual shelves, so they can’t tell you whether there’s a pack in your branch today. Here’s what turned up on 6 October 2026:

• Carrefour. Its own toasted buckwheat for Drive (click and collect) and home delivery: Sarrasin Grillé Kasha from Jardin Bio étic, 750 g. Sabarot and Celnat kasha are in the Carrefour catalogue as well, but they’re sold by third-party sellers (Sabarot itself and Naturitas), so they may not be in the shop. Untoasted buckwheat comes from Sofal, 500 g.
• Super U. Kasha from Moulin des Moines in 500 g, and untoasted Naturaline, also 500 g.
• Auchan. Untoasted only: Happy Bio in 500 g and Bio par Nature in 400 g, in the “Céréales, galettes, quinoa” category. We couldn’t find toasted kasha in the online catalogue: searching the Auchan website for “kasha” brings up kosher products, and “sarrasin grillé” only finds mixes.
• Monoprix. Untoasted Priméal in 500 g, and flakes from the same brand in 350 g.
• Intermarché. Happy Bio and loose groats from Les comptoirs de la Bio, but both were marked unavailable in the store the site picks by default.

Kasha is easier to find in the organic chains. Biocoop sells it loose (Sabarot, groats from Lithuania) and in 500 g packs, La Vie Claire has its own kasha in 500 g, and Naturalia has toasted and untoasted Atelier Sarrasin in 400 g.

The South also has the Satoriz chain. According to the business register, it has shops in Mauguio near Montpellier, in Nîmes (115 boulevard des Français Libres), in Nice (37 avenue Auguste Vérola), in Mandelieu-la-Napoule, in Les Angles near Avignon, in Aubagne and in Puget-sur-Argens. Satoriz has no online shop, and the only evidence of kasha there comes from Open Food Facts, the database shoppers fill in themselves: it lists Markal kasha in 500 g tagged Satoriz.

We didn’t find buckwheat groats at Grand Frais: their website has a recipe with sarrasin grillé, but not the product itself. Picard had no ready-cooked or frozen buckwheat either.

Can you order buckwheat online for delivery in France?

Yes, and buckwheat is easier than tvorog or pelmeni: it’s dry and doesn’t need keeping cold. Three of the online shops we checked post it all over France.

AKHTAMAR (Strasbourg). The catalogue has Uvelka buckwheat in 800 g and Champion in 1 kg. Delivery rates on 6 October 2026, from a test basket: €5 up to about 2 kg (one or two packs), €10 from 2.4 to 9.6 kg, free from €100. The site has since shut its basket to robots, and we haven’t rechecked those figures. The downside: the terms of sale on the site are still an unfilled template, with no delivery times and not a word about keeping anything cold. And take “En stock” with a pinch of salt: on 6 October our basket refused a 1-litre kefir that was supposedly in stock.

Katucha (Metz). “Sarrasin Rôti” buckwheat, whole toasted groats, 800 g. Colissimo anywhere in France, up to 20 kg per order, priced by weight; the delivery page mentions no free-delivery threshold (there wasn’t one in the basket on 6 October either). A test basket for postcode 34000 (Montpellier) on 6 October 2026 showed one pack travelling for €9.50 to a pickup point or €11.50 to the door, and twelve packs (9.84 kg) for €16.25 and €18.50. We haven’t rechecked those figures since: the site has shut its basket to robots. On those numbers one pack on its own isn’t worth the bother, but a shared order with someone from the chat starts to make sense. Katucha sends fresh food only on Mondays and Tuesdays and doesn’t post frozen food at all.

La Maison Russe (Saumur). More of a souvenir shop with a small dry-goods section. “SARRASIN 900g” buckwheat is in the catalogue, but on 6 October its stock count was zero, even though it could still be added to the basket, and the product page says “Livraison : 1 à 3 semaines”. The delivery page, meanwhile, promises dispatch within 24-48 hours, so check the timing with the shop. Rates from the delivery page on 17 October 2026: Relais Colis (pickup point) €4.99 for orders under €75 and free above €75, Mondial Relay from €7.99, Colissimo to the door €8.49 without a signature and €9.99 with one, with no free threshold.

Anahit in Marseille delivers its orders itself. The catalogue has its own-brand “Sarrasin (Grechka) 1kg” and Makfa in 800 g. The catch is that delivery is local: the delivery page names 12 cities, each with a 10 km radius, from Martigues to Nice, but at checkout on 6 October Marseille was the only one you could select. The rate that day was €10 per order, free from €100; these days it only appears after you fill in the delivery form, so we haven’t rechecked it. Montpellier and the rest of Occitanie aren’t on the list.

From the old lists you can safely cross off one site (now a blog about trips to Russia and visas) and another (the domain no longer opens). The online shop Prestige Russe had orders suspended on 6 October, while its home page carries an undated banner saying it delivers all over France. At Château Russe almost everything in the catalogue is priced at €0.00, so in practice you can’t order from there to the South.

How did we check, and what don’t we know yet?

On 6 October 2026 we went through the online catalogues of five supermarket chains and three organic ones, checked the wording on packs against the producers’ websites, and checked shop addresses against the SIRENE business register. The online shops we went back over on 17 October: prices come from their product pages, delivery rates from their delivery pages. The test baskets of 6 October were filled without paying, and they can’t be repeated, because the sites have closed them to robots. Wherever information comes from Open Food Facts, we say so: shoppers enter it themselves.

What we don’t know is what’s on the supermarket shelves in Montpellier, Nice, Marseille, Toulouse and Perpignan. The Carrefour, Super U and Intermarché websites block automated checks, so all we have from them is search results. There are no supermarket prices here, and that’s deliberate. Seen buckwheat in a shop that isn’t in our directory? Tell us in the chat.