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

nice simple ingedients

[e_phemera]

I know, "regular"oatmeal, is well OATS. :)
I was flabbergasted by the description of MCD's oatmeal as "oats, sugar, sweetened dried fruit, cream and 11 weird ingredients you would never keep in your kitchen.”

[lacylu42]

People probably already know this, but "old-fashioned" rolled oats (ie: not the quick cooking variety) only take 2 minutes to cook in the microwave.

One part oats to two parts water and a dash of salt in a bowl at least twice as large as you think it should be (oatmeal has a tendency to boil over in the microwave). Cook for 2 minutes on high.

Voila! And then you can add whatever flavors you like.

Daily sustenance!

[albionwood]

The Irish and Scots, who know from oatmeal, soak oats overnight before cooking in the morning. Oats, water, pinch of salt. Somewhere I read that this encourages certain enzyme actions that improve digestibility or something, but I haven't been able to re-find that reference. Certainly it reduces cooking time, and improves the texture of steel-cut especially.

In Ireland they usually add a pat of butter to the cooked oats, making them sweeter, so you need less sugar. We add dried fruit slices to the soaking oats, and add no sugar at all. Pears are especially good with oats.