I like this recipe.
My favorite is making thick-cut oats with milk in a pot. It tastes great, and has a nice chewy texture. But that takes a little while and the pot is a PITA to clean.
My favorite easy mix-in is craisins. But I also like some nuts and/or butter and brown sugar. Or just plain, with milk.
There’s some great recipe ideas in this thread. 
I’ll get a good bowl of oatmeal from at least one or more of them.
I’ve always preferred hot cereal. I’ve made cream of wheat my entire life. Now oatmeal is back on the menu.
I’ll still get pancakes. But only as a special treat at IHop. No more at home. Too much sugar and carbs.
Many thanks.
Steel-cut oats here, too. I like a little crunch to them, so I cook about 10-15 minutes.
It makes a big difference which kind of oats you use. You probably used instant or quick-cooking oats overnight.
It won’t be mushy if you use rolled oats.
What’s the Difference Between Steel-Cut, Rolled, and Instant Oats?
I’ll have to look at mine, since I have no idea what it is. Sorry.
Don’t most sugar substitutes weigh less than real sugar? That could account for a significant part of the difference.
Oat groats are still superior to steel cut, steamed, rolled, pressed, or other varieties. IMHO, of course.
I got tired of oatmeal 2 or 3 years ago, so I’m not quite sure how I made it. But it was something like this.
Like some others, I prefer oatmeal thick and fairly dry. I half-fill a mug with regular oatmeal, then enough skim milk to just cover it, plus a little more. I add a dash of salt and stir. Then I microwave it, watching it continuously. Whenever it threatens to boil over/emerge as a mass, I open the microwave, stir the oatmeal, and continue cooking. Repeat until microwaved for about 1 minute (or less if you feel it’s done). Stir in raisins/nuts/whatever. I like real maple syrup in it if I have it on hand.
Adjust cooking time and amount of oatmeal and milk/water as desired.
Originally I ate one-minute oatmeal. On one occasion I bought regular oats by mistake. By the time I finished the box, I decided I preferred the regular.
My oatmeal always boils over. I have to put a plate under the bowl and cook it for small periods of time and let it rest before continuing the cooking.
What’s the problem? They’re different products.
My Quaker Instant routine: Empty 1 pack each Apples & Cinnamon and Raisins & Walnuts into bowl. Add boiling water directly from Kerrigan on lowest volume setting. Stir and enjoy, as soon as it won’t scald my tongue.
Instant Oatmeal packs are brilliant while camping and skiing. Portable, cheap, easy warm nutrition.
As a kid I liked oatmeal (Maple and Brown Sugar please) and ate it all the time. It was one of the few hot foods I could prepare myself.
One day I was hungry and found a package in the cabinet. I made it and ate a spoonful and it tasted funny. I looked down and the bowl was full of meal worms. I literally threw the entire bowl in the sink and ran.
That was almost four decades ago and I still haven’t eaten hot cereal since.
I remember when you could get powdered drink mix (Wyler’s etc.) in packets with the sugar added. They were freakin’ huge compared to the artificially-sweetened drink mixes of today.
The point is that they cheated the reduction by just offering less food.
What I don’t get is singling out Quaker: everyone does this. I once saw one about reduced calorie soups. They always reduce the serving size to pretty up the numbers.
I think his point is that they reduced the sugar by reducing the amount in the pack, not by removing sugar from the product.
Actually, it looks like they did both.
Because I clearly have nothing better to do tonight, I dug up the product info on the two products in that picture:
Quaker Instant Oatmeal Apples and Cinnamon
Quaker Lower Sugar Instant Oatmeal Apples and Cinnamon
From the nutrition info:
“Regular” Apples and Cinnamon
“Lower Sugar” Apples and Cinnamon
The apple bits themselves are undoubtedly a source of some of the sugar in both products. The Lower Sugar ingredient list includes sucralose (a.k.a. Splenda), which isn’t listed in the ingredients for the regular product, and strongly suggests that they replaced some, if not all, of the added sugar in the cereal itself with sucralose.
One gram of sugar provides 4 calories, so the removal of 6 grams of sugar (24 calories) only accounts for about half of the reduced calorie level of the Lower Sugar product (24 out of the 50 calories, compared to the regular version), as well as only accounting for half of the smaller packet size (6 out of the 12 fewer grams).
I have no idea if the amount of sucralose used in the Lower Sugar formula adds any meaningful mass to the packet, but given the lower size of the packet, as well as the lower levels of the other nutrients in it, I think it’s safe to say that “yes, they made it smaller, but beyond that, they also took out some sugar.”
I /like/ my oatmeal mushy. Back in the day, I used to take the rolled oats, add dates and powdered milk, and /boil/ it for half an hour
That would be mushy alright. Have you ever tried cream.of wheat?
I have tried instant oatmeal a few times, mainly when camping. If it is a question of going hungry otherwise, then I’ll eat it, but as far as I am concerned it is only good for holding up wallpaper.
Why bother with the mush in packets when real porridge oats can be cooked in a minute, in a saucepan?
(No, I’m not Scottish.)
This is similar to my method, which is: