Nearly every morning, my husband prepares a soaked oatmeal porridge. It’s evolved over the years, from an overly sweetened oatmeal to a version that’s sweetened only by dried fruit like raisins. It’s important to soak oatmeal prior to preparation. Doing so increases the digestibility of oats as it does and it enables the nutrients found in the grain to be better absorbed by your body. Oats, like all grains, contain phytic acid which can inhibit the proper absorption of minerals link zinc and iron.
soaked oatmeal recipe
By Published: June 9, 2009
We like to serve these oats with seeds, nuts, dried fruit and yogurt or diary kefir.
Ingredients
- 1 Cup Rolled Oats
- 1-2 Tbsp Raw Cider Vinegar, Whey, Yogurt, Lemon Juice or Kefir
- 1 Cup Whole Milk
- Pinch of Salt
- 2 tsp Cinnamon
- 1/4 Cup Nuts and Seeds
- 1/4 Cup Raisins
Instructions
- Soak rolled oats, seeds and nuts overnight in enough water to cover – adding lemon juice, kefir, whey, yogurt or cider vinegar to the water.
- In the morning, drain oats and rinse them well.
- Add milk to a pot and bring to a boil over medium-high heat.
- Immediately turn down heat and add remaining ingredients.
- Stir frequently and continue to simmer until oatmeal has thickened to your liking.
- Serve with yogurt, kefir and natural sweetener of your choice.
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Is there a reason you boil it in milk instead of just adding more water and boiling? We use raw milk, but I would think that boiling it would make using raw less beneficial. Just curious.
Good question. Of course, one of the primary benefits of raw milk is that it is a living food: beneficial bacteria, natural vitamins and enzymes are all intact. If you cook the milk as we do in this recipe, there’s nothing critical about using raw milk; indeed, you can use pasteurized milk. Of course, it should still be from grass-fed cows and be nonhomogenized.
You could definitely use water in lieu of milk, but I think it’s important to not only respect a food’s nutrients but also the flavor and texture of the overall dish. In this case, cooking the oats in milk makes them ever so creamy and that is missing when they’re cooked in water.
By coupling the oats cooked in milk with a raw milk yogurt or kefir you can balance both the creaminess of cooked milk in the porridge with the beneficial bacteria and natural enzymes present in the yogurt or kefir.
You are awesome. Great Response!
Mmm, I love soaked oatmeal! My son-in-law fries leftover oatmeal in raw butter with the raisins and stuff & its really good.
By the way, when you say “rolled oats” are you referring to whole, non-toasted, non-steamed oat groats (with the bran intact)?
Thanks!
Ren
Check out Ren’s last post: Roasted Asparagus with Capicola and Balsamic Grilled Peppers.
I’m new to soaking grains.
Can you soak the oatmeal in just plain water overnight?
Why do you need to drain the oatmeal the next day and rinse it?
I learn this cooking process in a magazine and want to know if this can pass as soaking:
I normally put steel cut oats in a pot with water and bring to a boil. When it comes to a boil, I remove the pot from the heat and let it sit overnight. Is this the same as soaking?
The point of soaking with water and the acids or whey is to release some or most of the phytic acids in the oats which inhibit your body’s ability to absorb the nutrients in the oats. It’s important to rinse the oats after soaking overnight to flush away the phytic acid. I you use the method of bringing the oats and water to a boil and then turning off the heat, this is slow cooking and softening the oats over night. A short cut to cooking in the morning. Though when you soak the oats and then rinse before cooking the oats will cook more quickly as well.
Soaked oatmeal is a favorite in our house too. I haven’t put nuts or seeds in it yet. That sounds yummy! We also love to make an oatmeal casserole where instead of cooking the soaked oats on the stove we put them in a casserole dish with a few eggs and all the fixins’ and bake it at about 375 degrees. It comes out thick and is soooo good.
Check out Kelli’s last post: New Echota and The Vann House.
LOVE oatmeal, and it’s really so easy to soak before preparing.
D – As far as soaking goes, my understanding is that draining the soaked grains removes the phytic acid and acidic taste from the grain after soaking.
If you’re interested, there’s all sorts of great information on soaking grains right here on the site: http://tr.im/o2X9
Check out lo’s last post: Spring Grill: Baby Bok Choy and Spring Radish Salad.
Does the rinsing remove the nutrients though? I’ve tried soaking grains in the water and acid, and can’t stand the taste. Does the sour flavor disappear completely, or just partially?
Thanks for the great recipe. I love oatmeal but have always found it a bit hard to digest. I will have to try soaking!
jen
Boda Weight Loss Blog
.-= jen boda´s last blog ..Listening to the Body: Clues and Tips for Good Health =-.
I adore oatmeal…may have to give this a go tonight.
I like to add walnuts and dried cranberries…mmmm.
I see those funny characters too!
Help, please. Some of the numbers in the recipe appear as “” instead of as numbers. How can I get the right numbers for your recipes?
For raw milk users who don’t want to compromise the milk by boiling it, you can cook the oats in water, and add milk to serve. Personally I prefer a dollop of cream instead of milk, as do the French.
For medicinal porridge recipes, try The Book of Jook.
I’d really like to try this method. I guess that soaking the grain with an acid is similar to treating corn with lime juice (nixtamalization) to make it more digestible, as is done in Mexico.
I’ll be trying it this weekend. Thanks for the clear instructions!
Nixtamal is corn treated with calcium carbonate, known as Lime. Not the citrus fruit.
I’m going to try using coconut milk with my oatmeal next time since I am trying to avoid dairy. I’ll probably mix it with water since it is 100% fat – maybe half water and half coconut milk. I will let you know how it turned out
Ok, so adding the coconut milk to my oatmeal tasted great but was harder for me to digest. Overall I noticed that starches don’t mix well with fat. Adding a raw egg however goes very well with me.
Had this last weekend for the first time, and it was SO YUMMY! I’m not a big oatmeal eater, but this was just wonderful.
Have you ever tried this with pinhead or steel cut oats? If so, was it successful?
Rachel -
I’ve had great success with this recipe using steel cut oats; indeed, I far prefer them to rolled oats.
Thanks for reading, and let me know if you try it!
- Jenny
I soaked this recipe last night with steel cut oats, raw sunflower seeds & pumpkin seeds, flax seeds, and pecans. Unsweetened vanilla almond milk was the only option for a cooking medium but it turned out so creamy and luscious! I put a handful of frozen blackberries at the bottom of each bowl, scooped the porridge on top, added a dollop of yogurt and we were good to go! I haven’t had success with using a slow cooker for oatmeal or with an earlier attempt at soaking, but this time it was fabulous. Thank you for this post.
Thanks for these tips. I tried making soaked Oatmeal for the family but didn’t know I was to drain and rinse and didn’t know I could use milk to cook. Will try this next time and I couldn’t get anyone to eat it! They said it was too sour! Perhaps the rinsing and cooking in milk will help this. Thanks!
I used to soak my oats in yogurt and eat them straight out of the fridge as is the next morning. Little did I know that this method probably fails to get rid of the phytic acid in the oats. I soaked my oats “properly” last night with water and some yogurt. I loved how they turned out this morning! I made mine with pumpkin pie spice, cranberries, and pumpkin seeds – the perfect fall combination!
If you double or tripple the batch of oatmeal porriage, do you have to increase the amount of vinegar or lemon juice,etc. My family doesn’t like the residual taste of the soaking agent. Any ideas??
Just make sure you rinse it thoroughly, and the residual sour flavor should recede a bit. Of course, I’m a big fan of the “Eat what’s on your plate or don’t eat at all” philosophy which usually gets reluctant kids and spouses to start eating more nutrient-dense foods within about a week … or learning to cook.
Thanks for the great ideas! I am new to soaking grains and wondering if I can use souring raw milk to soak the oats (to clarify, this is milk that has been opened but in the refrigerator for about 2 weeks and souring). I wasn’t sure if this would have the same effect on the grains as the cultured kefir or yogurt. Thanks very much!
Just a quick question, do you refrigerate the soaking oats? or leave them out?
I’m dairy-free – what’s the best alternative for this? Almond milk? Coconut milk?
Hi Jenny,
Appreciate your website!
So the purpose of the soaking is to get the phytic acid out of the oats. Is there also the purpose of fermentaion from the kefir or whatever is added, that this will grow and increase these good bugs while sitting out on the counter overnight? If the fermentaion growth is also a purpose, then wouldn’t the heating of the oatmeal destroy those good bugs? Wanting to introduce this into our diet and wanting to understand the whole process. thanks for your help!
My understanding is that you need an acid medium WITH the water during the soak to reduce phytic acid, water alone won’t do it.
Also, oats are low in phytase – the enzyme that breaks down phytic acid, so adding a bit of rye flour (1 TB per cup of oats) or buckwheat flour if you want gluten free, which are both high in phytase, will help remove even more phytic acid from the oats. The flour is flushed away when you rinse the oats in the morning.