Overnight Oats

[Toliver]

Overnight Oats seems to be a current food fad. It's oats soaked overnight in milk and/or yogurt. You can add other ingredients (fruit, nuts, sugar, vanilla, etc), then put it in a jar/container and store it in your refrigerator overnight. In the morning, you can eat the overnight oats cold or heat them up. Some recipes say not to add any fruit until you go to eat the oats (due to the fruit quality changing during the overnight soak) while other recipes tell you it's fine to just mix it in and then refrigerate the whole thing. Some recipes I've seen online looked more like dessert than breakfast.

You can find some recipes here on the Quaker Oats web site (click). You can Google/search for more.

 

Has anyone tried making them? Eating them? Have a recipe they enjoy? Talk to me....

[ElsieD]

Alrighty, I'm up for this.  Just mixed together 1/4 cup old fashioned oats, yogurt, milk, added a rounded quarter cup of frozen berries and maybe a tablespoon of honey.  Will report back in the morning.  I'm hoping it won't have a gummy texture.

[heidih]

This immediately prompted a memory of Bircher Muesli from the 70's. Here is a lik to a Guardian article on more modern takes https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2014/oct/23/how-to-make-perfect-bircher-muesli-recipe

[Alex]

We've done it. Dried fruit can go in at the start; fresh fruit and nuts should wait. You can add nutritional stuff, if you like, e.g., ground flax seeds or chia pets, er, seeds.

[Tri2Cook]

8 minutes ago, Alex said:

We've done it. Dried fruit can go in at the start; fresh fruit and nuts should wait. You can add nutritional stuff, if you like, e.g., ground flax seeds or chia pets, er, seeds.

I haven't tried the overnight oats thing but I do have some experience with ground flax seeds. I'm picturing one gummy bowl of oats after the ground flax spends a night in a container of milk.

[cakewalk]

I can't help thinking if you don't like the oats you can just add some flour and maybe a bit of water and it will make one luxurious starter. 

[barolo]

2 hours ago, heidih said:

This immediately prompted a memory of Bircher Muesli from the 70's. Here is a lik to a Guardian article on more modern takes https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2014/oct/23/how-to-make-perfect-bircher-muesli-recipe

Yes I grew up eating Bircher Meusli (Swiss parents).   Grated apple, oats, nuts, yogurt. 

[btbyrd]

You can also prepare hot oatmeal overnight in a thermos. It helps to preheat the thermos by adding very hot water (and then dumping it) before adding your oats and hot liquid. 

[chromedome]

I remember trying this once, the last time it was in fashion.* I wasn't especially enamored of the texture, and went back to doing it the traditional way. Now I cook up several days' steel-cut oats at a time (one cup oats, 4 cups water) and just microwave my morning portion. 

 

*The 80s, perhaps? I'm picturing Wilfred Brimley television commercials, so I suspect it was the oat bran ("right thing to do") era. I always thought someone should have made an oat bran whisky, and hired ol' Wilf to promote it. "It's the right thing to do...(slurs) an' a damn' tasty way to do it!"

[MelissaH]

9 hours ago, btbyrd said:

You can also prepare hot oatmeal overnight in a thermos. It helps to preheat the thermos by adding very hot water (and then dumping it) before adding your oats and hot liquid. 

About 15 years ago, we participated in a tandem bicycle rally, camping in the Netherlands in late May. My husband and I were two of the 8 Americans participating. The weather was mostly nice, but it was definitely oatmeal-friendly in the mornings. In fact, it was chilly enough that we had a difficult time lighting our stove, if we didn't bring the Gaz canister into bed with us at night to keep it warm. One of the other campers told us about sleeping bag oatmeal: oats and boiling water sealed together in a container with a secure lid right before you go to bed, wrapped in some of your extra clothes and stowed in the foot of your sleeping bag until morning. It can help keep your feet warm in bed, and in the morning it will warm your insides.

 

We never did try it. We didn't have a container with a lid I'd trust along with us on that trip.

[NancyH]

I am having Euell Gibbons flashbacks (and hearing Richard Dawson say, "Hickory nuts can be fun;" you had to grow up in the 70s) Actually, I'm thinking this preparation method might work better with Grape Nuts than uncooked oatmeal.

[ElsieD]

An experiment to never, ever be repeated.  It's like eating wallpaper glue.

[boudin noir]

I do it in the morning. Before you make your coffee mix your rolled oats yogurt and milk with what ever enhancement you prefer and when your coffee is ready he oats will be chewy and not soggy.

[Toliver]

On 4/5/2017 at 9:41 AM, ElsieD said:

An experiment to never, ever be repeated.  It's like eating wallpaper glue.

Thank you for taking one for the team...

Do you think more liquid (milk and or yogurt) would have improved it?

Or perhaps heating it up?

Or do you think the overnight soaking was too long and nothing could have rescued it?

[ElsieD]

1 hour ago, Toliver said:

Thank you for taking one for the team...

Do you think more liquid (milk and or yogurt) would have improved it?

Or perhaps heating it up?

Or do you think the overnight soaking was too long and nothing could have rescued it?

 

Nothing would have improved it.  It had no texture, it was just one gluey mass.  It reminded me of those instant oatmeal packets, where you just add boiling water and presto!  it's done.  Equally revolting.   By the way, I did not use quick cooking oats.  I used Bob's Red Mill Old Fashioned Rolled Oats.  I love oatmeal, which this did not as much as have a passing resemblance to.

 

I'm happy to take one for the team.  Glad to have been of service.

[Lisa Shock]

I eat old fashioned oats quite often, and like them a bit chewy. I don't think I have cooked them for more than three minutes in years. Shortcuts seem unnecessary.

[liuzhou]

My culinary challenged mother used to serve this back in the 1950s. It was disgusting then and there is no way it could have become better over time. Wallpaper paste is cheaper and probably tastes better.

 

Quote

Oats. n.s. [aten, Saxon.] A grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.

Samuel Johnson 1755

 

There are only two ways to use oats. Like breadcrumbs to coat herring prior to frying and to make proper Scottish oatcakes. Pass the cheese.

[Thanks for the Crepes]

When this topic first appeared, it made me go to the pantry and get a small glass mise en place bowl and put some old-fashioned rolled oats into it and sprinkle them with a little kosher salt and eat them while perusing eGullet. I only like rolled oats either dry like that, or in granola or oatmeal cookies. They are also great roasted a little as a topping for a nice loaf of bread. I adore rolled oats on the crust of good bread. Oooh! and one of the main reasons I keep them around is for a butter, brown sugar topping that gets baked crispy on top of fruit crisps. The oats absorb moisture and become less appealing with leftover refrigerated fruit crisps, but are still palatable enough for said leftovers to disappear.

 

I can abide steel cut as long as they are not overcooked. They are still mucilaginous, but somewhat redeemed by the chewiness that the grains themselves have. I don't love them, but they're healthy, so I will eat them.

 

I do not like the gluey texture of boiled rolled oats at all, and sort of figured this overnight idea would not be for me. I'm serious y'all, I think you can literally paste up wallpaper with the mucilaginous stuff that comes out of cooked rolled oats! EEEeewww!

 

Thanks for taking one for the team @ElsieD.

[GlorifiedRice]

I made this 4+ yrs ago when it first starting showing up on Pinterest.

LOVED IT!

Would easily eat the entire jar.

Crack!

 

But I love oatmeal.

 

Edited April 8, 2017 by GlorifiedRice
Posted before I was finished (log)

[Toliver]

I'm also not understanding how, in some of the videos, people layer the ingredients in the mason jar and then eat it that way, layer by layer. Don't you want to mix it all up before eating?

[BeeZee]

I make this frequently with Trader Joe's multigrain hot cereal mix. It retains a nice texture. I found a "base" recipe which includes 2x volume milk (cow, soy, nut) to oats, chia seeds, and banana + other mix ins. The banana needs to be ripe, I cut it really thin and mix it in so it pretty much dissolves into everything, it acts as a natural sweetener. I use unsweetened vanilla almond milk, a squirt of agave syrup or honey, and cinnamon. Other additions have included cacao nibs, sliced toasted almonds, or additional fruit. I will usually make a large batch of the "base" and freeze portions in reuseable plastic containers (Ciao Bella gelato pint container with screw on lid are great for this). When defrosted I will add fresh fruit or nuts.

[gfron1]

here comes my two cents because I'm perplexed by the wall paper glue comments. I've been serving these at my breakfast restaurant ever since we opened. When I was r&d'ing these I had two issues that I need to deal with. First, was the texture - not paste, but too course. Second, is a slightly metallic taste that was coming from the raw oats.

 

I get my oats from a local farmer - organic, small farm, minimally processed. And I think that's the difference (possibly) between mine and the haters' comments above. I soak in water or whey (with brown sugar and maple...just enough to not make it sweet), overnight, then blitz with a stick blender to about 60% blended - I like the diversity of texture. These less processed oats than something like Quaker, are nothing even close to paste. My recommendation if anyone cares to try again is to buy some bulk ones from a natural food store. Then to deal with the metallic taste I toasted my oats before I soaked them. That helped but didn't completely solve the problem. I now try to deal with the remaining metallic taste with the other ingredients.

 

To finish the oats, I then add a bit of yogurt (we make our own and drain it, and its thick and tart) - sometimes I'll add some powdered milk the night before but not as often since it shortens my shelf life. To serve I smear the bottom of the bowl with pecan praline, add the oats, dust half of the top with black cocoa crumb, the other half gets a heaping mound of crunchy granola, garnish with two encapsulated spheres of horchata and a spoonful of espresso jelly. I think its pretty good

[lindag]

6 minutes ago, gfron1 said:

here comes my two cents because I'm perplexed by the wall paper glue comments. I've been serving these at my breakfast restaurant ever since we opened. When I was r&d'ing these I had two issues that I need to deal with. First, was the texture - not paste, but too course. Second, is a slightly metallic taste that was coming from the raw oats.

 

I get my oats from a local farmer - organic, small farm, minimally processed. And I think that's the difference (possibly) between mine and the haters' comments above. I soak in water or whey (with brown sugar and maple...just enough to not make it sweet), overnight, then blitz with a stick blender to about 60% blended - I like the diversity of texture. These less processed oats than something like Quaker, are nothing even close to paste. My recommendation if anyone cares to try again is to buy some bulk ones from a natural food store. Then to deal with the metallic taste I toasted my oats before I soaked them. That helped but didn't completely solve the problem. I now try to deal with the remaining metallic taste with the other ingredients.

 

To finish the oats, I then add a bit of yogurt (we make our own and drain it, and its thick and tart) - sometimes I'll add some powdered milk the night before but not as often since it shortens my shelf life. To serve I smear the bottom of the bowl with pecan praline, add the oats, dust half of the top with black cocoa crumb, the other half gets a heaping mound of crunchy granola, garnish with two encapsulated spheres of horchata and a spoonful of espresso jelly. I think its pretty good

 

It looks awfully good (and I'm a porridge hater).

[naguere]

My order of Steel cut oats ( coars cut) 25Kg arrived today, i had to roll the package in to my study, what a weight.

the other  pi c is Elijah from London and Tom from Melbourne, cousins (just to amuse you) a couple of my Grandsons.