Okay, real food lovers, I’ve got a recipe for you. Amazingly versatile, it’s a cold breakfast cereal and quick-cooking hot oatmeal rolled into one.
And, to top it all off, it’s inspired by Nourishing Traditions (a FoodRenegade Must Read).
This Nourishing Traditions inspired cold cereal is mildly sweetened with raw honey and served with raw milk. YUM.
I don’t know about you, but I was addicted to cold breakfast cereals. I went for the “healthy” brands like Kashi, Back to Nature, or Mom’s Best. Even after deciding to only eat sprouted, soaked, or fermented grains, my family still had a hard time giving the morning ecstasy up. Our turning point was learning that the process of extrusion — so useful to make all those fun breakfast cereal shapes — makes the oils in the grain go rancid. The image of my beloved, healthy breakfast cereals being deodorized to hide their vile secret sent shock waves through my system.
We stopped eating cold cereals cold turkey.
That’s when I started wondering how to create a cold breakfast cereal that was wholesome. Plenty of folks make homemade granola, and I supposed I could go that route. But soaking the rolled oats only to dehydrate and bake them again later seemed like work.
I’m lazy.
So, this is what I came up with. The great news is that when it’s cold and served with raw honey and milk, it’s an entirely raw and fermented food!
Easy NT Friendly Cold Cereal/Instant Oatmeal
4 cups of steel cut oats
1 quart of yogurt
1 cup of dried fruit (I use raisins)
1 cup of unsweetened coconut slivers
1 cup of seeds or nuts (I use raw sunflower seeds)
Mix the oats and yogurt in a large bowl, cover, and let sit overnight. In the morning, mix in the other ingredients. Keep stored in your refrigerator in an airtight container for 3-4 weeks.
TO SERVE COLD: Scoop into bowl, drizzle with raw honey, pour in raw milk. Enjoy!
TO SERVE HOT: Mix equal amounts of cereal and water in a bowl.
For quick-cooking hot oatmeal, mix equal parts of cereal and water in a bowl.
Microwave on High for 3-6 minutes, depending on your microwave and desired consistency. Or, cook on a stove until boiling or desired consistency is reached. Add a pat of butter, a dash of cinnamon, and a drizzle of raw honey or maple syrup. Stir and enjoy!
Voila! Quick-cooking, convenient, Nourishing Traditions friendly hot oatmeal.
ETA: Please note the secrets to this recipe are twofold. 1) Use equal parts of steel cut oats to yogurt. This way you can make this in whatever quantity will keep your family in cold and hot cereal for two or three weeks, and 2) Sweeten with honey or maple syrup — not unrefined sugar or stevia. You need a strongly flavored sweetener to blend well with the sour of the plain yogurt and make the cereal pleasantly tangy.
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That looks yummy! I’m currently hooked on a boxed granola that’s more expensive and much higher in sugar than any kind I could make myself, but I’ve been too afraid of the labor involved to try to make my own. Yours looks way easier. How much does it make and how do you store it? 8 cups of steel cut oats sounds like a lot for one person.
This makes enough to feed my family of four for about two or three weeks. I’d say it takes up roughly the space of a gallon, and I store it in the zipper-sealed plastic bags I get when buying bulk food items at my grocery store. I’ve got to reuse them somehow, and this is a good fit.
You could easily halve the recipe.
THE KEY is to use equal parts steel cut oats to yogurt. So, 4 cups oats, 4 cups yogurt. 2 cups oats, 2 cups yogurt. Then, you basically just add coconut, nuts, and dried fruits to your taste.
You DEFINITELY want to sweeten with honey, though, when you serve it b/c otherwise it’s too tangy!
I had never thought of serving raw oats soaked in yogurt! It’s funny because this is how I start my NT-friendly Baked Oatmeal… although it’s not raw, I find it easy, delicious and nutritious. I like to eat it cold with milk; my husband prefers eating it toaster-oven warmed as a bar with his morning coffee. My 2 1/2 yr old son eats it anyway I give it to him – but usually picks out the raisins first! One of the best things about it is the minimal amount of honey required to sweeten it.
This is interesting. Not sure I would enjoy uncooked oats, but sounds interesting. I must say, I don’t agree with the microwave book (and is very un-WAPF to use the microwave) but could easily be made on the stove like we make our oatmeal porridge.
If you want another cold breakfast cereal idea that is WAPF approved, there is a set of handouts from a lecture that Sally Fallon did for our chapter. There is a chapter leader who created this cold cereal that is NT compatible. Sally says it is very good.
You can find the recipe handout on our website for our chapter. http://www.htnetwork.org and click on the link for Growing Connections, then scroll down to the May 30th event and there is a link for the recipe document
Kristen,
Hi! When you’re soaking overnight, are you leaving the oats and yogurt out at room temperature, or letting them soak in the fridge? Are there pros/cons to either way? I’ve been using the fridge, just in case.
Thanks!