I’ll bite. Where do I start?
Where? The kitchen. When? Tomorrow. It’s bedtime here now. You’ll get your writeup when I’m awake and caffeinated and not before.
My porridge is too hot!
That’s tempting, but much as i like rich fatty protein-rich food the rest of the day, i like to break my fast with milk and cereal and tea. I don’t like sweets at breakfast, either. I eat boring “adult” cereals, like grape nuts, wheat Chex, or a home made muesli of (raw) oatmeal and some trail mix that’s mostly coconut flakes, with some other nuts and dried fruit. I usually put some berries on my cereal, too.
I love hot cereal, but mostly only eat it when someone else cooks it for me.
I love chocolate Malt-O-Meal. As a kid, I always had mini marshmallows in it, and I still do!
My grandma would always give me graham crackers with warm milk over them. I called them Mushed Up Graham Crackers. They were really good. Would the crummy graham crackers that we have nowadays taste as good? Nothing ever seems to.
It’s oat groats for me.
Oat Groats: The Ur Oat, the olympic ideal. Only the inedible husk is removed. All the fiber, all the nutrition. All the oat taste. Takes over a hour to cook, unless you use a pressure cooker and even then it will take about 20 minutes at high pressure. Their chewiness is part of their appeal for the sophisticated oat groatist. Slow to digest, it fills you up and keeps you filled. Glycemic Index (GI) around 42. Groaty to the max!
Steel cut oats: also called Irish oats or pinhead oats, these are just groats that have been cut into smaller pieces to speed cooking. Cooks in 10-20 minutes. Good nutrition, decent mouth feel, still pretty damn healthy with GI around 45.
Scottish oatmeal: another version of groats that have been broken into bits, only these are stone ground instead of being cut. Cooks in 10 minutes. Glycemic index is a bit higher due to being broken into bits, and it gets digested faster. GI 50
Oat bran: a high-fiber part of the oat that’s been removed and can be eaten separately. Oat bran can be prepared as its own hot cereal or simply sprinkled on your favorite bowl of breakfast to boost the nutrient content of every bite. Cooks in 2 minutes. All of the health of the groat, but none of the flavor. Unless it’s Cracklin’ Oat Bran, where flavor is added by adding LOT of sugar and even more fat. Add it to other dishes to add fiber. It doesn’t have a lot of carbs, but those carbs are absorbed faster: GI of 55
Old fashioned oats: groats that are steamed and then pressed flat. Increasing the surface area this way and partially cooking them helps you get breakfast to your mouth faster. Cooks in 5 minutes. Pre cooking tends to reduce flavor. Glycemic index higher due to pre-cooking breaking down the starches further and increasing digestion. GI 55
Quick oats: like old-fashioned oats, except rolled thinner and steamed longer and more likely to spike your glucose levels. Cook in 1 minute. You don’t really cook it, you just hydrate it and make it hot. GI of 83
Oat flour: pulverized groats that can be used in baking, etc. This is still considered a whole grain because nothing was removed before the oats were ground into flour. Perfect for your oat bread, oat pizza crusts, Use in the place of regular flour by weight, not by volume. Can make a sort of ‘cream of wheat’ cereal out of it that’s gluten free. Not on my breakfast menu though. GI as high as 86, depending on how cooked
Steel cut oats for me, cooked overnight in a small crockpot à la the Alton Brown method noted above (although I don’t add fruit or sweeteners to mine). I like to mix in a pinch of salt into the water before cooking and after the oats are done mix in enough milk to make the porridge almost runny. Then I cook up an egg over easy and serve it on top of the hot porridge. MMMM… delightful. However, my crockpot crock broke so I haven’t made them in a while.
I also like Bob’s Red Mill hot cereals, especially this one. I cook it in milk rather than water, add the pinch of salt, and the result is a wonderful and quite quick workday breakfast. It does have a higher GI so I don’t eat it all that often, but when I do indulge I cherish it.
Drat. Now I’m hungry. I guess I need to go get a new 1 quart crock pot.
Two pseudocereal grains I’ve tried to like but simply don’t care for: buckwheat & adlay / tears of Job. Wheat is on top but I’ll enjoy some breakfast oats, corn, and rice, too.
We had an…unusual…hot cereal when I grew up. Times were tough and we had government commodities and a couple of cows, so my mother would heat up whole milk then fold in flour until it thickened up, calling it “milk mush”. We would put sugar and sometimes cinnamon on it. We even put cold milk over it as you might over other hot cereals!
The Four-Minute Hot Breakfast
As explained in an long ago post but slighting improved here. With full credit to @Qadgop_the_Mercotan for the quick egg technique which I later tuned up a touch.
Quickly Poached No-Fuss Egg(s):
- Start with an individual ramekin or Pyrex bowl big enough to comfortably hold the cracked egg(s). I have some hemispherical 4" dessert bowls ideal for this, but almost anything that size or a bit smaller will do. Smaller is better than too big.
- Put ~1/2" of water in the bowl. A little less is better than a little more.
- Microwave the bowl + water on full power for 30 seconds to get the water good and hot. In the dead of polar winter you might need 45 seconds. No need to boil the water, just get it close.
- Carefully crack your egg(s) into the bowl of very hot water. A broken yolk means a disgusting but still nutritionally adequate result.
- Pierce each yolk with a toothpick, knifepoint, etc. CAUTION: Skipping this step sometimes results in needing to wash out your microwave.
- Microwave on 50% power for 50 seconds for 1 large egg, up to maybe 110 seconds for 2 jumbos. You’ll have to experiment with times versus your own microwave, size & number of eggs, etc. No need to cover the bowl with anything. CAUTION: Skipping the “50% power” part definitely results in needing to wash out your microwave.
- Use a slotted spoon to carefully get under the cooked egg(s), then tip the bowl into the sink to drain as much of the liquid as you easily can. The bowl will be very warm to the touch, but not too hot to comfortably handle. No awkward mitts are needed. You’ll lose a bit of runny white in the water if the eggs are less-done. So be it. Rinse the slotted spoon and set it aside to dry.
- Eat the egg(s) with whatever seasonings or sauces you enjoy. The bowl & spoon are the only utensils needing to be washed afterwards.
My standard breakfast is one quick poached egg as above, some dairy such as cottage cheese or non-sweet yogurt, some fruit such as berries, a banana, or a tangerine / mandarin, and a small slice of low-carb bread with a thick smear of PB. Sometimes I skip the bread in favor of more fruit, but still eat the PB. I aim for a low simple carb, but also low grease, diet. This meal kicks ass for that.
During the ~2 minutes total that the microwave is running I can get out the bread & drop a slice into the toaster to warm, get out the PB, fruit, and dairy, and pull out the slotted & regular spoon. Plus a paper napkin to serve as a plate & placemat for it all. Before the spoon gets eggy, eat your serving of dairy out of the container, then spoon out a lump of PB onto the toast & spread it a bit with the back of the spoon. Then eat the egg, fruit, and PB-ed toast together in whatever order.
With practice, you can put the whole thing on the table in 4 minutes flat. The key is to do all the non-egg prep work while the microwave is running. By the time the water has heated, the toast is started and at least one of the other things is out of the fridge and on the table. During the egg cooking, the rest of everything moves to the table. No need to rush, just don’t dawdle and no false or extra moves.
If the eggs sit 20 or 30 seconds in the cooking water before draining while you’re wrapping up other prep, they’ll continue to firm up a bit, but not too badly. And they’ll stay warmer that way versus being drained first, then waiting for you to finish the other prep. Once you’re practiced at the whole thing, there won’t be any time for eggs sitting around. The microwave beeps, and you’re ready to pull them out, drain them, and set them on the table with everything else already waiting.
This meal definitely takes longer to eat than it does to make.
Clean-up is all but instant too. When you’re done, close up the napkin full of bread crumbs, dripped whatever, and perhaps some fruit peel. Then a quick face-wipe and into the trash it goes. Rinse the egg bowl & spoon & into the dishwasher they go. Done.
Ready. Set. Go!!
I also remember seeing a recipe for hot Grape Nuts. Don’t think I ever made it.
I grew up eating corn meal mush, oatmeal or Cream of Wheat. Typically oatmeal and Cream of Wheat was instant. I’ve never seen instant corn meal mush.
I found semolina last year at Aldi, so I can make my own cream of wheat. Very welcome when I was recovering from surgery and didn’t want anything complicated to eat.
I like Cream of Wheat cooked in milk. I used half milk and half water. The fat in the milk makes the cereal creamy.
Oatmeal is good once in awhile.
I add a little brown sugar and yellow raisins to hot cereals.
IIRC it used to be printed on the side of the box in small type. Now with the magic of the WWW we can have many variations:
The base of all of them amount to 1) mix cereal with milk; 2) zap until hot & semi-soggy enough.