Hot Cereal Add-Ins

[weinoo]

Whether it's oatmeal, 7 or 10-grain cereal or another hot cereal that I'm stovetop cooking for breakfast, I like to add in a few things while the cereal is cooking. Lately, I've been going with assorted dried fruits, cut up if needed (like apricots) or whole (like cherries, cranberries, raisins).

Do you have any favorite add-ins when and if you make hot cereal?

[Peter the eater]

My kids like to add dried currants while the oatmeal is cooking and frozen blueberries to help with the cool-down.

[nakji]

Oddly enough, salt. I always add a little salt, and butter if it's hanging about.

[mkayahara]

I'm with you on the dried fruit, and I often add some vanilla extract or cinnamon as well. Since I don't add sweetener to my oatmeal, I find that "sweet" spices make the oatmeal that much tastier. I also always, always season with salt. In this respect, why would oatmeal be different from any other food I eat?

[DanM]

I typically toast my grains in butter before adding the liquid to help bring out the flavor. I like to add a chopped up apple to my breakfast at the beginning of the cooking cycle. One off the wall, yet curiously good addition to my oatmeal has been peanut flour. I don't know why, but it works well.

Dan

[BeeZee]

Cinnamon and nutmeg, sometimes a pinch of cardamom. For the liquid, I often do half water and half milk (cow/soy/almond - depends on what I have). Dried fruit, chopped if larger. Drizzle of maple syrup or honey. Sometimes I just mix in a spoonful of preserves for fruit flavor/touch of sweet.

[Beebs]

Sounds odd - but leftover soup (the brothy kind) or chicken broth cooked in my hot oatmeal. I don't usually care for sweet things for breakfast, so a hot savoury oatmeal really hits the spot.

If there's no leftover soup handy, I'll cook it with whatever softening bananas on hand, pecans or walnuts, and maple syrup. Tastes like banana bread.

[Peter the eater]

I typically toast my grains in butter before adding the liquid to help bring out the flavor.

I've never done that, sounds brilliant. Do you use a high-walled non-stick pot?

[andiesenji]

I add crumbled crisp bacon with a scant teaspoon of granulated maple sugar to steel-cut oats (toasted) or steel-cut barley or buckwheat or sometimes a combination of these grains with other grains and seeds.

[Dianabanana]

Mr Dianabanana puts grated cheese on his oatmeal. It's really quite good! He also toasts the steel cut oats in butter before adding water and a pinch of salt.

Deborah Madison has an idea for cornmeal mush with vanilla extract and butter that's also very nice.

[nolnacs]

I generally go sweet with my oatmeal and like other people I typically add dried or cut up fruit. In particular, I really like dried tart cherries which provide a nice counterbalance to the sweetened oatmeal (I usually add brown sugar or maple syrup). I also generally cook my oatmeal in milk, but the best oatmeal I have ever made I made with real buttermilk left over from a butter making experiment. I'm not entirely sure why it tasted so much better than normal milk, but it really made a difference.

[JasonW]

Now that its winter here, I've been eating oatmeal everyday for breakfast with super-ripe-about-to-fall-apart persimmon

[SobaAddict70]

I occasionally stick a bag of spiced almond chai or vanilla/chamomile in the oatmeal. Makes for a great flavor-upper.

Also coconut milk in place of regular milk.

[DanM]

I typically toast my grains in butter before adding the liquid to help bring out the flavor.

I've never done that, sounds brilliant. Do you use a high-walled non-stick pot?

Nope. Just a standard 1.5 quart stainless steel pot. The grains tend to soak up the butter so you are essentially dry toasting them.

I follow Alton Brown's recipe for steel cut oats. I toast .5 cups of oats until fragrant. Add 1.5 cups of water, a cut up apple, and a pinch of salt and bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer, cover and cook for 25 minutes. Add .5 cups of milk, spices, and then simmer covered for 10 more minutes. Sweeten as desired.

Dan

Edited January 20, 2011 by DanM (log)

[ChrisTaylor]

My girlfriend stirs in a great lump of peanut butter. Supposedly it was the done thing in Zimbabwean boarding schools. Doesn't really work for me.

[Katie Meadow]

Always butter, usually maple syrup. Occasionally molasses, or, if I have some on hand (which I don't often) shagbark hickory syrup. I noticed recently that Hickoryworks, the shagbark people, now sell a smoked hickory sea salt. Though I do salt the water just before adding my steel-cut oats, it never occurred to me to salt it at the finish. The hickory salt might be yummy that way. If you haven't ever had shagbark hickory syrup, it tastes like a campfire.

Sometimes I add peaches in season or fresh berries, but just a few. I like to bury raspberries in the hot oatmeal so they get melty. Then I always top off with a little cold rich milk or half and half.

I used to toast regular long-cooking rolled oats, and that really improved the flavor and the texture. But I'm very happy with the taste of untoasted pinhead oats. I'm sure they are fantastic toasted. Lazy, I guess.

[rarerollingobject]

Like Beebs, I also go savoury with my oatmeal..cook up a batch of pinhead oatmeal with slices of ginger, chicken broth (or bouillon powder in a pinch), sliced ginger and white pepper, sometimes a star anise to fish out at the end. That's the basic "mix ins", along with a spoon of duck or goose fat.

Toppings vary but generally include one or more of sesame oil, chilli oil, chopped green onions, crispy fried shallots, Chinese leek flower sauce, toasted sesame paste, black beans, gochujang, soy sauce, leftover shredded chicken..

People (around me) seem pretty grossed out by the idea of savoury oatmeal but it's not that different from congee IMO. The Scots also do a couple of savoury porridges with onions mixed in, like skirlie.

[DickL]

While I don't have hot cereal often, I do use dried fruit in muffins. Based on that, I'd suggest you try (if you haven't already) different kinds of raisins ("regular", gold, black (muscat), currants) and cherries (sweet, tart), dried blueberries, dried apples (which may benefit from a brief soak in citrus juice), dried peaches, chopped dates or figs. And when serving, there's the ever-popular sliced banana, which I like with some gold raisins and maybe a drizzle of honey. I've also had oatmeal with butter, raisins and brown sugar.

Another approach would be to use an Indian temper of spices and maybe garlic and maybe curry leaves in butter or ghee. Whole cumin, whole fennel, ground cumin, ground coriander, brown/black mustard seeds, chopped fresh coriander, grated coconut, red pepper (ground or flakes), asafoetida, split & hulled dal, and other things are also used-- check some Indian recipes, particularly those for dals, if this sounds like an interesting approach.

[weinoo]

Nice to hear that lots of people like the savory approach.

I tried it once (in order to get my wife to like her oatmeal more) but didn't meet with great success.

[karlos]

I was hoping a few more would chime in for some savory options. Only on rare occasions do I like sweet things for breakfast. I like to make steel cut oats with chicken or beef broth, saute some mushrooms, onions and add them in during the last 5-10 minutes, maybe a little soy sauce or parmigiana. I'm getting pretty bored of that though. Anyone else in my boat?

ETA: missed the 2nd paragraph of DickL's post. I'm going to try that.

Edited January 23, 2011 by karlos (log)

[MSRadell]

Craisins or Raisins plus a little cream!

[VibeGuy]

I like to saute either old-fashioned rolled or steel-cut oats in clarified butter, then *steam* them in a basket steamer until tender. It's very amenable to acting as a substrate for leftover daube, Chinese food, or curry in the morning. I can't do even brown rice in the morning (I get rice coma). Once I combined the steamed rice with leftover carmelized onions, minced country ham bits and covered the whole thing with poached eggs. Very successful.

[Kay]

A raw egg. I whisk a raw egg into the cooking liquid (half water half milk) at the start when doing rolled oats and then just cook as usual, salt of course. Not much change in the flavor of the cereal to me anyway, but more creamy and custardy to be sure. My metabolism likes the extra protein in the morning. Then to eat, I stir in a little toasted wheat germ, for a nutty flavor, some butter and and maybe a little more milk. One could really go either sweet or savory with this. Sound strange? I love it this way.