Cornelia M. Parkinson - Cooking with Oats: Oat Bran, Oatmeal, and More / Storey Country Wisdom Bulletin A-125

Oat Bran, Oatmeal, and More

Mares eat oats.

And does eat oats.

And little lambs but you remember the rest of that song.

The point is, except in Scotland, people eat comparatively few oats. Scotlands another story, though youll have to decide how seriously to take it. The way the story goes is that in eastern Scotland, the unmarried plowmen didnt eat anything but oats and milk, except for an occasional potato. They got up to two quarts of milk a day and seventeen and a half pounds of oatmeal a week. And they were strong, healthy fellows. The moral depends on how much you like oatmeal and how you feel about being unmarried. Nobody seems to know what the married plowmen ate.

Whatever your marital status and nationality, eating oats is a good idea. Oats are easily digested, provide good quality protein, are a source of several B vitamins, including inositol, and make good energy food for active outdoor people. And they taste so good!

You can buy oats easily in any of seven ways: whole with hulls, whole hulled (groats), steel cut, rolled (regular, quick, and instant), and flour.

Whole oats, with the hulls still on them, are sold in seed stores and sometimes by farmers.

Oat groats, with hulls removed, are found in natural-food stores. Two methods are used to remove the hulls commercially. One is to heat the oats and, when they are dry, run them through hulling stones to break off the brittle hulls. The other method is to use a huller, a device that slams the grains against a surface, cracking the hulls, which then can be winnowed out.

Steel-cut oats, groats that have been sliced into pieces with steel blades, are sold in natural-food stores and, occasionally, in natural-food sections of supermarkets.

Rolled Oats, groats that have been steamed and run through rollers to flatten them, are sold in all kinds of food stores. Quaker Oats is probably the most famous brand. This is what people think of when you talk about oatmeal.

Quick-cooking rolled oats are thinner than regular rolled oats because the groats have been cut into pieces before rolling. Supermarkets and natural-food stores sell them.

Instant rolled oats are made from partly cooked groats pieces and rolled even thinner than quick oats. These are rarely sold in natural-food stores because theyre considered overprocessed, but they fill the shelves in supermarkets. They are too expensive to be a good buy.

Oat flour, or ground groats, is sold in natural-food stores. It contains all of the oat but the hull. Usually you can buy it in bulk so you need take only as much as you can use in a short time.

Although a good natural-food store is the best place to find oats in all these forms, theres absolutely nothing wrong with supermarket oats. Do not make the mistake of assuming that oats you buy in natural-food stores are organically grown. Only if they are specifically so labeled can you count on that.

The following recipes are all selected from these Storey/Garden Way Publishing books: Whole Grains, Sara Pitzer, 1981; The International Vegetarian Cookbook, Kirsten Skaarup, 1982; The Maple Syrup Cookbook, Ken Haedrich, 1989; Surprising Citrus, Audra and Jack Hendrickson, 1988; Your Country Kitchen, Jocasta Innes, 1979; Cooking for Someone Special, Nancy Creech, 1985; Picnic!, Edith Stovel, 1990; Its the Berries!, Liz Anton and Beth Dooley, 1988; Making Whole Grain Breads, Phyllis Hobson, 1974; Garden Way Publishings Bread Book, Ellen Foscue Johnson, 1979; Keeping the Harvest, Nancy Chioffi and Gretchen Mead, 1991; Treasured Recipes from Early New England Kitchens, Marjorie Page Blanchard, 1975; The Carrot Cookbook, Audra and Jack Hendrickson, 1986; A-55 Winter Squash & Pumpkins, Mary Anna DuSablon, 1980; A-48 Cooking with Carob, Frances Sheridan Goulart, 1980; The Elegant Onion, Betty Cavage, 1987.

4 cups water

teaspoon salt

2 cups rolled oats

Bring the water to a rolling boil, add salt, stir in oats, and lower heat. Cook about 5 minutes, but do not stir more than once or twice. Remove the pan from the heat, cover it, and allow to stand for as long as 20 minutes before serving. The longer it stands the more creamy the oatmeal will be. If you like it to be very creamy, start the oats in cold water; if you like a coarser texture, shorten the cooking and standing times.

MAKES 6 TO 8 SERVINGS. FROM WHOLE GRAINS.

1 cups steel-cut oats*

4 cups water

Salt, if desired

Soak oats in the water overnight. Bring to a boil, and boil for about 40 to 60 minutes, or until the oats are translucent and tender. Add more water, if necessary. A pinch of salt may be added when oats are cooked.

*Rolled oats (quick-cooking or old-fashioned) do not require overnight soaking. See package for cooking directions.

MAKES 3 TO 4 SERVINGS.
FROM THE INTERNATIONAL VEGETARIAN COOKBOOK.

A woman who grew up in Alaska says this was her familys standard breakfast and it warded off the chill for a long morning. The addition of the fat it is fried in, and the syrup or honey it is served with, probably helped.

Prepare cooked oatmeal according to any of the preceding recipes or use leftover. If you cook oatmeal especially for this recipe, use a little less water for the same effect of thickening you get when oatmeal sits around after being left over.

Pour the cooked oatmeal into a buttered loaf pan and refrigerate at least 24 hours. Slice as needed, dust lightly with flour, and fry over moderately high heat in a little butter. Serve hot with maple syrup, honey, or molasses.

If youre tempted to skip dusting the oatmeal slices with flour, you should know that it makes the fried slices crisper on the outside.

You could increase the nutritive value of fried oatmeal by stirring in a handful of wheat germ or a small amount of non-instant powdered milk before pouring the oatmeal into a loaf pan for chilling. Youll have to fry the slices more cautiously then, because both milk powder and wheat germ burn easily on high heat.

To jazz up the flavor of fried oatmeal, you could stir in some maple syrup or dark molasses or cinnamon and raisins before turning it into the pan to chill.

FROM WHOLE GRAINS.

The old Settlement Cookbook says the double-boiler method produces a better flavor. Thats debatable, but it certainly does take longer.

2 cups water

teaspoon salt

1 cup rolled oats

Bring the water to a boil in the top of a double boiler, stir in the salt and the oats, and cook over direct heat for 5 minutes, stirring constantly. Meanwhile bring water to a boil in the bottom half of the double boiler on a separate burner. At the end of the 5 minutes, place the oatmeal in the double boiler top over the bottom half and cover. Steam over low heat for 30 minutes or longer.

MAKES 4 SERVINGS. FROM WHOLE GRAINS.

1 cup steel-cut oats

4 cups water