Non-Instant Breakfast

I have some strong opinions about food (and about many other things, beyond the scope of this blog). For example, oatmeal that comes in a little packet should be banned. It is vile sugar glue. Non-instant rolled oats are all right, and only take a few minutes longer than instant. The best, however, is steel-cut oats. It takes a little while to cook them, but the wait is well worth it. No gluey texture whatsoever, and the most oaty flavor. I say it's worth the wait, because what's the point of cooking oats without oaty flavor? Better half an hour well spent than two minutes wasted. Anyway, if you make extra, you can always reheat it within a few minutes the following morning, if you are in a rush.

Cooking steel-cut oats is easy, as long as you can wait. Just add three parts water to one part oats, bring to a boil in a heavy saucepan, then lower heat and simmer, stirring fairly often for about 25 minutes, or until the desired consistency is reached. One thing I like to do is add some chopped apples and a little cinammon about halfway into the cooking process. By the time the oatmeal is done, the apples are nice and soft. And the cinammon smell makes my children actually want to stop what they're doing and eat. Then serve the oatmeal in a bowl, add a little whole milk and honey, maybe some chopped walnuts, and enjoy your breakfast.

This morning, I had some extra chopped apples so I added a little chaat masala to them, and we had instant Indian street food alongside our non-instant oatmeal for breakfast. There are some instant foods well worth supporting. Well, I should say my husband and I ate the chaat apples, as my kids wouldn't touch them with a 10-foot pole. Chaat masala has a very strong flavor, and is maybe not your normal breakfast fare, but it did wake up our mouths. (I may do a more thorough post on chaat in the future. Chaat is an entire genre of Indian snacks. For those who are interested, chaat masala is a spice blend you can buy in any Indian store. Or, if motivated, you could make your own, though the stuff from the store is quite good. It's got a sour, spicy, sweet flavor, in addition to a sulfurous flavor from something called black salt, or kala namak. For the uninitiated, the sulfurous flavor takes some getting used to, but once you do, you will find you are addicted to it. It just makes things taste so strange, and yet, so good.)

Oatmeal Update: I just ran across this in the Chow home cooking digest, and it has some great ideas for "instant" non-instant oatmeal.