Oatmeal...in a rice cooker?
Stacey and I had been frequenting a local coffee shop over on Hawthorne, Common Grounds, handily one of the best of many in portland. They have had some impressive oatmeal on their menu, and we were dropping a few pennies a week on this stuff. Way better than the instant oatmeal i eat fairly regular in the mornings at work. I decided to try to recreate it.
First, I went to trader joes and stared at the various oatmeal offerings...irish oats, rolled oats, steel cut oats, various instant oats. I decided to go for a very innocent, old fashioned looking can of John Mccann steel cut oatmeal.
Next, I went home and followed the instructions, boiled some water, put the oatmeal in, total freakin' disaster. Didn't absorb the water, was a glutenous mess. Reminded me of my experiences trying to cook real rice. That's it! Use the rice cooker.
So, I pulled out the rice cooker and looked at the settings. Turns out there is one called 'porridge' on my fuzzy logic zojirushi 5000 so i went about setting it up, turning it on, and putting in the appropriate ingredients (oats and water as described on the oat meal container). After about an hour and a half (including 45 minutes soak time that the rice cooker appropriately counted down for me without any intervention on my part...i love this thing!) the rice cooker beeped at me and out came some absolutely DELICIOUS oatmeal. Great stuff, I mean legendary for those cold winter days.
I also added some organic brown sugar, craisins, and homemade granola from Elephants Delicattesen to give it some crunch and sweetness. I'm not sure the 'organic'-ness adds to the brown sugar, I think its more like 'not the cheap stuff' that makes it better than just average brown sugar.
So, takes longer than the instant stuff, but it tastes great. I'll be adding this to the cooking arsenal.
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3 comments:
Hmmm, wonder if my cheapo no settings rice cooker will cook the oats properly, provided I presoak them myself...
I can't say that I have ever had anything but instant oatmeal, and this post is sending me cravings.
Thanks for the comments -- I just got my Zojirushi and oatmeal is next up.
we just got a ZOJIRUSHI NEURO FUZZY RICE COOKER AND WARMER as a wedding present (I cut and paste because I'm lazy, my apologies). We didn't have any oats, so we tried making rice porridge. I'm not a huge fan of hot rice cereal, I think I prefer rice crispies and cold milk, but I'm excited to go the store and buy steel cut oats to make overnight oatmeal with. The timer function is AWESOME!
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