Mystery Lovers' Kitchen: slow-cooker oatmeal

Saturday, January 10, 2015

Better than ice cream make-ahead oatmeal

By VICTORIA ABBOTT aka MARY JANE MAFFINI

Are you getting up to cold dark winter mornings? Well, take this, winter! We've got some ammunition. Homemade oatmeal lets us fight back in the bleakest season. We love oatmeal around here and not just because it’s rumored to help regulate blood sugar and cholesterol. We love it because it’s yummy and just got yummier. We especially like the steel-cut oats, although we find it a bit time-consuming in the mornings.

We owe our friend, the mystery writer and artist, Joan Boswell, for the idea of making oatmeal in a small slow-cooker and letting it take care of itself overnight. A perfect breakfast for one or two. One ten-dollar slow-cooker later and we haven’t looked back.

We’ve been tinkering with the basic idea (steel cut oatmeal, water and bit of salt as per package instructions) for a while now and think we’ve hit the jackpot. If you’re like us and never found a recipe that you didn’t tinker with, then you’ll like this one. Every ingredient can be increased, decreased or eliminated, although you should keep the oatmeal part. No matter what you do, it’s fast and easy and what a payoff the next morning.

Some people think of steel-cut oats as fancy or pricey, but when you work out the cost per serving, it’s a bargain. We used President's Choice Blue Menu, but Bob's Red Mill has steel-cut and there are lots of other choices.

So let get started!

Overnight oatmeal for two

½ cup steel cut oatmeal. You could use rolled oats, but why would you? We think it would get gooey with long cooking.

1 cup plus 2 tablespoons milk

1 cup water

1/3 cup sweetened dried cranberries

2 tablespoons brown sugar (we use Splenda brown)

2 tablespoons maple syrup

1 – 2 tsp good quality vanilla

Pinch sea salt

Toasted slivered almonds to top

Milk or cream to top

Toast slivered almonds on a metal pan in 350 oven for ten minutes.

You can do this the night before or skip the step altogether. We thought the almonds would be soggy if added to the oatmeal earlier.

Combine oats, milk, water, vanilla, maple syrup, brown sugar and salt in slow cooker. Stir and cook overnight on low.

Get a good night’s sleep and look forward to breakfast with ease.

In the am, stagger into the kitchen, stir the pot, and add a bit of cream or milk and the toasted almonds to your bowl of delicious oatmeal.

How's that for a great start to your day?

Victoria Abbott is the mysterious collaboration between the artist and photographer Victoria Maffini and her mother, the mystery writer, Mary Jane Maffini. Strangely enough, their three book collector mysteries, The Christie Curse, The Sayers Swindle and The Wolfe Widow all contain lots of food.The Marsh Madness is due out in September 2015