Hay is for Horses, Oats are for Goats?

I’m on a steel cut oatmeal kick.  The first step is admitting.  Will and I argue about the merits of breakfast – and while I used to agree with him when I was younger I now eat breakfast every day.  I used to grab a granola bar every morning, but a couple years ago I completely cut out dairy from my diet (I thought I was lactose intolerant).  There is dairy in pretty much every packaged food so I started making oatmeal from scratch every morning (that means no little packages of pre-flavored Quaker Oats).  Since I was already making oatmeal from scratch I decided to try steel cut oats.  HOLY COW are they an upgrade from regular rolled oats.  They have a creamy, nutty flavor to them and a fabulous texture. Honestly I feel like I’m eating a bowl of warm tapioca (I love warm tapioca) every morning when I eat them.  (One time I accidentally referred to them as “dessert” to my husband who thought this was quite hysterical.)

Now on to the downside – they sure are a pain to cook.  The original recipe calls for boiling them for 25-30 minutes.  I used to make the “quick” version (which really isn’t all that quick).  They take 6 minutes in the microwave in a GIANT bowl (or expect your entire microwave to be covered in oatmeal) plus time to let them stand.  Alternatively you can cook them for 6 minutes on the stovetop (my preferred method)  after pouring them into boiling water.  But the 6 minutes usually turns into at least 10 with boil time.  And I am LAZY in the morning.

A month or so ago after daylight savings time, after my third day in a row coming into the office at 9:30, my co-worker was joking about my tardiness.  Luckily I’m an engineer and 9:30 is far from tardy – but I did mention to him about how the clock set backs had thrown my whole routine out of whack, and that I had been skipping breakfast to compensate.  I explained my whole breakfast routine and how I love steel cut oats but they take so darn long to cook.  Then he made a genius comment, “you realize you can make them in a crock pot, right?”  Well I had indeed heard that but I hadn’t tried it myself because my crock pot would hold about 2 gallons of oatmeal and that seemed excessive.  I expressed this to him and here is where the real magic occurred.  He said, “they have little crock pots”.  Well I knew this as well, but for some reason had never really thought about putting these two facts together.  And I didn’t have a tiny crock pot.

Well lady luck was on my side that weekend when I went to the thrift shop.  They had not one but TWO tiny crock pots for me to choose from.  The one I ended up with is Crock Pot brand and holds about a cup and a half of liquid and has two settings (plugged in or not).  I think they’re made for keeping dips warm.  As a matter of fact I believe it is called the “Little Dipper” and looks like this.  It looked like it had never been used before and cost me $3.  I was willing to try it.  Well it works so great that I have been using it every morning to make my oatmeal.  I fill it with oatmeal and water every night and then wake up to perfect oatmeal every morning.

Here’s my recipe:

Lexi’s Crock Pot Honey Raspberry Steel Cut Oats

• 1 C water
• 1/4 C steel cut oats (NOT quick cook)
• 1/4 C frozen raspberries
• 1 tsp honey

Put water and oats in crock pot.  Cover, plug in and let sit overnight.

Add water and oats to crock pot and let sit overnight.

In the morning scrape oatmeal into a bowl and stir in the honey while the oats are hot.

Oatmeal the next morning. Some of the consistency varies a bit since you weren’t stirring it all night. But I promise it is still delicious

Add 1 tsp honey to oatmeal and stir.

Add the frozen raspberries and stir.

Add frozen raspberries to cool the oatmeal down.

Let sit 1 minute while the raspberries defrost, cooling down your oatmeal to the perfect temperature in the process.  Eat.

Clean up:  It is a bit of a pain to clean the tiny crock pot because you can’t submerge it in water and you can’t remove the tiny crock.  What I do is after I eat my oatmeal I pour water into the tiny crock pot and let it sit all day while I’m at work.  When I come back the oats stuck to the sides of the pot come straight off with no scrubbing.