I love starting the day with a bowl of healthy oatmeal, but I don’t like rolled oats or the instant stuff and most days I’m on the run early, with no time to cook a bowl of steel-cut oats. That 30 minutes it takes to cook oatmeal from scratch doesn’t sound like much, but at 6 a.m., it’s a deal breaker for me.
I decided to try cooking oatmeal sous vide, hoping that if I began the process at night, the oatmeal would be cooked by morning. After a number of time and temp trials, I got it sorted. Now I throw it together before I go to bed, and can feel virtuous about starting my day with a nutritious breakfast.
One interesting thing I noted with the sous vide technique: The raisins plumped beautifully during their long, slow cook, and gave up much of their natural sugar, as well as some color, to the oatmeal. My testers thought I had sweetened the porridge with sugar, but there was no need!
Makes 2 servings
- Preheat the water bath to 155°F (68°C). See other temperatures and times below.
- Combine the groats, water or milk, raisins, cinnamon, and salt in a large, zip-lock food bag. Seal using the water displacement method.
- Cook 8 to 10 hours. See other times and temperatures below.
- Open the bag, divide the oatmeal between two bowls, and serve hot. You can also refrigerate the cooked cereal and reheat in the microwave another day.
Note:
- At 180°F (82°C), the oatmeal cooked in 2 hours.
- At 200°F (93°C), the oatmeal cooked in 1 hour.
I *knew* someone would figure out overnight oatmeal in the sous vide! Thanks!
Drawing from Modernist Cuisine, I suspect you could fill your SVbag with ice for easier sealing, and maybe even freeze prepared bags for later use.
Cool idea on using ice cubes instead of water; thanks! If you try it, let us know how you adjusted time/temp to allow for the frozen liquid.
I’ve figured out another hack for cooking liquids in the sous vide. Take a tip from the yogurt and dulce de leche and use canning jars.
I’ve also used it on dried beans and caramelizing onions! So you can make single servings by dividing the ingredients above into 2 2C canning jars. So much less fussy than the displacement fill.
Brilliant, Greta. And we love your photos documenting the sous vide caramelized onions in jars.
The caramelized onion photos are here. And these are the beans.
Once again another awesome recipe that works really well; definitely worth the hunting around for the pinhead oats in the UK.
The raisins really do plump up and sweeten the porridge, although some may find the amount a little on the generous side.
I also tried making it plain and then added some forced rhubarb that had been cooked sous vide (with sugar, water and vanilla paste) which was pretty good as well.
Glad it worked for you, Craig. I’m curious about your sous vide rhubarb — any chance you’d be willing to post the recipe?
I used the recipe following British Larder post:
http://www.britishlarder.co.uk/vanilla-sous-vide-rhubarb/#axzz1pnTxaLsh
I did found that i was happier with the texture after 40 minutes for my purposes, as an addition to yoghurt and porridge,but this may have been affected by using ice cubes to allow me to vacuum seal the ingredients with no stress.
Good notes; thanks. And I wonder if the texture thing is influenced by the age/size of the rhubarb. We should be seeing more of it in local farmer markets in the coming weeks; I may give this a whirl.
A wide mouth flask works great for the overnight porridge with the addition of dried fruits and nuts.
Another vote for jars! They seem to work well in a lot of sous vide applications. Thanks, Tadg.