Oatmeal: How Do You Make Yours?

[BoldHighlander]

my oats are used cold and uncooked with yogurt/milk, nuts, honey and fruit... Muesli

ith:

How did I forget Muesli?!
Especially in light that I've been eating it this past week!

I also forgot to add that I like 2% milk with my Irish oatmeal.

I tried grits once.

Once was enough.

I first ate grits at Fort Benning, Georgia, courtesy of Uncle Sam. I learned very quickly that Tabasco sauce was a grunts best friend

[Lallans]

1) For really good oatmeal, you should first lightly saute the large-as-possible oat flakes right in the cooking pot, using butter or your oil of choice. This amounts to toasting them but with the added flavour of the oil and is how I used to cook them in my vegetarian days when I had trouble getting enough fat in my diet. Did that ever happen? Well yes in the pre-obesity-epidemic days it was a problem, for vegetarians at least. I would cook the oats in 2 times the volume of water, salt added.

2) Nowadays, I place pricey steel cut oats in my hideously expensive Zojirushi Fuzzy Logic Japanese rice cooker with 2.5 times the volume of water and let it do the brain work. One can set the digital timer and have them ready any time one chooses, including ridiculously early in the morning, and choosing from about 10 different cooking speeds- it'll be ready all the same and when you want. I still add salt, myself. It supposedly inhibits the cooking process but I've never found that.


PS: I like grits, I often crave grits, but try and buy grits in Canada! It can't be done!

[Legba]

Honey Grannola and a spoonfull of Peanut Butter.

[Drac]

All right, I believe in corn. How do you like your grits?

You could have traditional Navajo mush which is ground corn, often blue corn, boiled with juniper ash if you want to be adventurous...

Isn't the addition of an alkali what makes corn into hominy and thus digestible? I thought that's why lime is added to make masa.

Jim

[Bugbear]

Isn't the addition of an alkali what makes corn into hominy and thus digestible? I thought that's why lime is added to make masa.

Jim

Basically yes. It's digestible without doing that, but does not have as many nutrients and there is a whole bunch of chemical changes going on. Hominy is called "nixtamal" in the case of masa.
The ash is the alkaline part in the Navajo mush. The blue corn changes the color of the water and everything else being boiled to blue when the right PH balance has ben achieved. As you point out, lime is also used, and our water here is already very alkaline, so...

I would have to look up what the Dine' call the nixtamal but it is a direct process and the ash is eaten along with the corn (maize).
The yellow flint and flour corn works just as well, but does not do the blue trick.

It's the alchemy of the Ancient Ones.

* Looks like cedar and other ashes are also used in place of the juniper needle ash to make the mush.

[MacGuffin]

I use steel cut oats cooked in milk and water with a bit of salt. While boiling I add some brown sugar to the mix and cook it till gooey. Like to put dried cranberries in the oatmeal also.

Can usually eat it day or night.

[Slowburn]

I soak my steel cut oats in cold water for 2 days, then remove all the fluid. Mix with equal volumes of wiskey add cream and honey to flavor and enjoy.

[Bugbear]

I soak my steel cut oats in cold water for 2 days, then remove all the fluid. Mix with equal volumes of wiskey add cream and honey to flavor and enjoy.

I suppose you could cook it that way by lighting it up; oatmeal flambe'...
Poof! Where's my eyebrows!

Glad I don't drink.

[Richard]

make it in the normal way, throw it in the bin and get the frying pan out

[Tobus]

Steel cut or rolled oats boiled in well salted water make sure they are good and thick. Served with milk, sticks to your ribs. Can't stand anything sweet on my porridge

I can't stand sweet oatmeal either (unless they're baked into cookies/biscuits).

I eat oatmeal EVERY MORNING without fail. I will usually cook a big pot of it on Sunday morning, and then divvy it up into individual portions to re-heat each morning during the week. Here's what I do:

First, I use only steel-cut oats, purchased in bulk at a local Sun Harvest store at 97 cents/pound. I buy about 10 lbs. at a time and put it in a big sealed container. To cook it, I use 1/3 cup dry oats per serving, boiled in water at a volume ratio of 4:1 (water:oats). I don't put salt in the water. I just bring the water to a boil, toss in the oats, and let it simmer for about 20-25 minutes, stirring regularly with a wooden spoon and skimming off the foam, until it starts going "glop glop" when it bubbles. I then remove it from the stove and divvy it up into individual containers, and stack them in the fridge.

Each morning, I take my individual portion of oatmeal, nuke it until it's hot again, and then add about a tablespoon of butter and a couple generous splashes of heavy cream until the oatmeal (which had congealed to a rubbery consistency) is good and 'snotty' again. Stir well, then top with a light dusting of ground sea salt.

That is a breakfast that sticks with ya until the midday meal. There is just something wonderfully simple and wholesome about a good breakfast of oatmeal with butter, cream, and salt.