Oatmeal: comfort & convenience

[e_phemera]

Oatmeal is one of my very favorite comfort foods, cooked with milk, served nice thick and warm. Perhaps further garnished with a TB or so of granola, or sliced fruit. And, if I want to change it up, couscous also makes a nice breakfast cereal

Comments

[harliquinnraver]

i love steel cut oats cooked on low overnight in the crockpot. add cinnamon, skim milk, ground flax seeds and frozen blueberries and youve got a delicious and utterly wholesome meal. <3

[horsemanure]

Oh, I never thought about cooking them in a crockpot. Would regular rolled oats work as well? How do they reheat? Could I make it overnight Sunday night for the whole week and then nom on them every morning through the week?

[harliquinnraver]

regular rolled outs cook too quickly for the crockpot method, im afraid.
reheating oatmeal in general is a tricky process since it tends to solidify when cold. i cant eat much oatmeal (maybe a half cup or so), so i tend to make it in individual batches using a water bath method in the crockpot. theres less to clean up that way.

[amyura]

I'll take the 30 minutes to cook the steel-cut variety. I can get them started and then jump in the shower and get ready for work, and when I'm done, they're done!

[vivonelcarmelo]

You can also "make" oatmeal the night before by simply soaking the oats in milk overnight in the fridge. Even slow cooking oats absorb moisture from the milk just fine (I can testify that it also works with almond milk and soy milk). When I do this, I just heat it up to a comfortable temperature in the morning since it doesn't really have to cook; it takes a fraction of the time. The texture is just as soft but less gummy than cooked the traditional way.

[amandorky]

Ever since I started paying attention to ingredient lists, those quaker instant packets were out of the question for me. I have a problem with taking something nutrtionally sound and tarting it up with enough junk ingredients that it actually becomes unhealthy.
I get a big canister of the quick cooking oats (ingredients: 1), use a tablespoon or so of honey--we just lucked into a big, unprocessed mason jar full from a local beekeeper (ingredients: 1), and heat up with some water. Sweet enough for any sugar lover, and the value cannot be beaten.

[fairgoldberry]

I have a big canister of multi-grain on my desk at work. It's got oats, rye, wheat, and barley, so it is a little chewier and nuttier than regular oatmeal. I pop over to the bulk foods section at the grocery store next door every couple of weeks and pick up some dates, raisins, dried strawberries, whatever floats my boat (when I have a dehydrator again, I will make my own, but I sacrificed my food dehydrator to the fieldwork gods). I toss the oats and the dried fruit into the bowl with water and then into the microwave (we have no stove at work), add a spoonful of heavy cream and a liberal sprinkling of cinnamon, and top with a little honey or raw sugar.

The cinnamon-fiber-protein combination does wonders for my blood sugar all morning, when I used to get crazy fluctuations.