I like steel cut oats. I tried the overnight method. Once. Yuck. Complete mush.
My method is tried and true.
Boil three cups of water in a sauce pan. Add 1 cup steel cut oats and then turn the burner to low. Stir once and leave the lid off. Go take a shower, put in contacts, and get dressed. This should take about twenty minutes. Say “oh, shit, my oatmeal!” and run to kitchen. Breathe a sigh of relief, turn the burner off, stir, and divvy it up into four containers. Put three in the fridge and take one to work. Reheat at work with fruit, nuts, 1 packet sugar, and a splash of milk.
One of my favorite stir ins is to cut up half of an apple and sprinkle it with cinnamon, cloves, and brown sugar. Microwave that on high for about a minute to make almost apple pie filling.
I used to enjoy the instant stuff many years ago, too. I bought some recently just out of nostalgia – maple and brown sugar flavor – and it seemed pretty much the same as I remembered it, but I don’t cook it in the microwave. I pour the dry stuff in a bowl, microwave a measured amount of water in a measuring cup, add the water to the dry oatmeal, then let it sit until it thickens. Then I add a bit of cream over the top. Seems to me the taste and consistency is just as it always was. But it’s more of a kid thing and I rarely have it.
From what I can see, the low-sugar packaging is only slightly smaller in the nutritional ingredients (23g whole grains instead of 26g) but contains half as much sugar, which is the second main ingredient after oats, including sugars from other carbohydrate ingredients. If you work out the sugar proportion relative to the total serving size, you get 12/43 = 0.28 for regular and 6/31 = 0.19 for the “lower sugar” variant. Why the package size is a little smaller I don’t know – maybe because it’s aimed at the diet-conscious – but proportionately it really does contain about a third less sugar per gram, so I don’t think there’s anything misleading in the packaging claim.
I just completely ignore the instructions on the box, pull a mug of hot water from the Keurig, dump in the packet, stir, and then let it sit for a minute.
What am I missing here? Complaining that instant oatmeal is crap is like saying frozen pizza is terrible. I’m not trying to threadshit but if you want good oatmeal make it the right way.
I don’t use instant oats, and Quaker is not available in Indonesia where I did most of my shopping until recently, but I had the same problem when using the microwave. And nothing I tried (lower temperatures, shorter cooking time, stopping in the middle to let the oats rest) really solved the problem…
…until I finally got a brand of oats that actually discussed the tendency of oats to overflow. The solution? Microwave the oats in a really big bowl that accommodates the bubbling up.
Seems like the obvious solution, but embarrassingly enough it did elude me.
These days I eat Coach Oats (which are weirdly grainy compared to oat flakes, supposedly to keep the texture less mushy) because that’s what CostCo sells. They are pretty good, although I don’t find traditional oats objectionable in any way.
What you’re missing is that aceplace remembered liking instant oatmeal when he ate it as a kid, and, decades later, when he tried it, it didn’t match up with his memories.
You’re pressed for time in the morning, I get that and I’m not going to even pretend to tell you what you should do. This is how I do oatmeal. It’s a fraction of the cost of the instant packets with much better nutrition. It takes all of about two minutes active time to make plus a 15-20 minute rest before eating.
1/4 cup old fashioned oats (not quick oats - just plain Quaker rolled oats)
1/4 cup steel cut oats
1/4 cup dried cranberries
1 tablespoon hulled sunflower and/or pumpkin seeds
1 tablespoon powdered milk
1 tablespoon orange flavored Psyllium fiber booster
All this goes into one of these wide mouthed food thermos bottles.
Top up with boiling water, seal and shake it. Come back later for a hearty and piping hot breakfast. If you’re running late, take it out the door with you and eat later. It will still be hot.
Now see, that’s a bit how I like it to look when it comes out of the microwave. You put JUST enough water in to barely cover it. Then when it comes out, I like to add milk, to make it thicker. I’ve always found that some of the water evaporates and soaks in when I heat it. Maybe your microwave is different.
I think adding just that bit of milk to stir it makes a real difference, and putting in real brown sugar, rather than just buying flavored, is much better. (Plus you can’t find cinnamon brown sugar, just maple. I hate maple oatmeal)
Does pouring boiling water from the kettle not work anymore?
It’s really frustrating that nobody will disclose the power level of the uwave oven that the directions are standardized to. Then you can adjust either the power level or the cooking time.
Agreed. I’ve seen some microwaveable products that do list the wattage assumption. For example,Jimmy Dean breakfast sandwiches indicate “Directions were developed using an 1100-watt microwave oven.”
From what I can see on the product pages for Quaker Instant Oatmeal, they don’t specify (only saying “Microwave ovens vary in power. Cooking time may need to be adjusted.”) OTOH, their package does list the “add boiling water to dry oats” directions, so there is that.
