Porridge - on cooking oats and living longer

Porridge is any type of edible mush made from grains. To the extent that cooking porridge is actually cooking may be to tacitly extend an invitation to toast and coffee into the exalted halls of the culinary arts. (Is it really food if you don’t need teeth to eat it?)

​Its simplicity aside, I want to write about porridge in this whimsical food blog of mine, damn it. Call it self-indulgent, but there’s something about porridge that, as someone drawn to a keyboard and newline button, I simply want to type about. Hemingway said “write what you know.” He knew about bullfights, stiff drinks, and grace under pressure. Well, I know about porridge. As the old adage goes, "you are what you eat." And I’m at least four bags of Quaker rolled oats.

My faithful jar of oats, barley, and rye greets me first thing in the morning.

In this post I’m gonna share a few stories about my all-time favourite breakfast: porridge oats. I’ll offer my opinion of the best varieties of oats and other grains, too. And as the food I’ve cooked the most in my life, the recipes I’ll share are arguably my most finely-tuned.

Oatmeal is easy fodder, both in a literal and figurative sense. Like any good comfort food of the warm-and-mushy ilk, it is nostalgia in a bowl. Memories are suspended like globs of oats adhered by whitish goo, much like inside the hippocampus of the brain. Goldilox liked hers warm and just right. Oliver twist wanted more. According to Bob Marley’s tearjerker “No Woman, No Cry,” Bob Marley prefers a cornmeal porridge. In a practical sense oatmeal is cheap, dead easy to cook, and it is good for you. When I was an itinerant student in Vancouver, BC, I shared a basement apartment with a science student who ate oats for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. She was the brokest, healthiest person I had ever met.

I swear by plain oats with a pinch of salt before a big running workout or race. I eat it before a big day of climbing in the mountains. I also eat it before a big day of normal life. Sometimes I add blueberries, apples, nuts, flax seeds, bananas, dates or whatever the hell I want. Get creative. Be bold. Or, be lazy. Sometime I eat my oats raw with yogurt on top.

Want evidence of its health? Check out this stacked paper from Harvard School of Public Health that says eating more whole grains (like oats) is associated with a 15% lower mortality, mainly related to heart disease. In the world of public health, 15% is a significant finding.

Some notes on oats:

• Rolled oats have the best bite
• Steel cut or rolled oats aren’t any healthier than quick oats. It’s all the same grain, just processed in different ways. 
• You can save money on oats by buying in bulk. Trust me, I’m a grad student and I know a deal when I see one.
• Oats don’t really expire. 
• Those little packets of oats, with the dusty flavour dust inside them? Those doesn't count. Grow up and cook your own oats.
• Bring oats camping.
• Oats burn slow and steady for all-day energy. Whether you're an office worker who checks her watch at 10:30 hoping it's lunchtime, or whether you're an ultra-runner at the half-way mark of a 50-miler, oats hold the key for all-day energy. 

Plain Oats
Here’s a recipe for basic oats. The key here is stirring. And forget milk, it’s best with water.

Serves 2
1 cup quick oats or rolled oats
2 ¼ cups water
Pinch salt

Place oats, water, and salt in a small saucepan on a medium heat. Bring to a boil, bring down the heat, and stir for 5 minutes under a gentle simmer.

Loaded Oats
Cook as per plain oats recipes and then just stir in and top with your choice additions.

Serves 2
1 cup quick oats or rolled oats
2 ¼ cups water
Pinch salt
Choice addition. Get creative.

Here are some of my favourite additions:

• Dried dates, stirred in till they break down, topped with walnuts.
• Bananas, sliced thinly and served with cinnamon, slivered almonds, and maple syrup.
• Ground flaxseed, stirred in and topped with fresh blueberries.
• Raisins, stirred in ‘till they swell up, topped with roughly chopped apples and almonds
• Blueberry soup (mustikkakeitto). This is a Finnish thing. Check out my recipe here.

Remember, it doesn’t have to be smothered with sweeteners. Try it savoury, try it for lunch, for dinner, or for a snack. Experiment with different grains combos (I like a mixture of oats, rye flakes, and barley flakes) and enjoy the rich bite of rolled oats instead of pulverized quick oats.

Fermented Oats
Now we’re talking. Fermentation enhances the aroma and flavour of porridge and improves digestibility and nutrient availability. It also adds a creamy texture I love. But admittedly it's not for everyone.

Serves 2
1 cup quick oats or rolled oats
2 ¼ cups water
Pinch salt
1 tbsp choice culture (for example yogurt, keffir, or sourdough starter)

Note that this one scales up particularly well. I often make a tub of it and leave it in the fridge to enjoy at breakfast, as a snack, or as lunch all week.

Cook it as per the plain recipe, but just cool it down afterwards and add your choice culture and leave overnight at room temperature. I usually use a tablespoon of yogurt. I’ve also used keffir, buttermilk, whey, and I’ve even used my sourdough starter, all with great results.

​Rye is a greyish-blue grain that is ubiquitous in Eastern and Northern Europe. It has a rich texture and assertive sour taste. It is very low in gluten and very high in a type of vegetable gum that makes it sticky, which is why making rye breads is famously difficult. There's a saying in Finland that if someone's strong, he's "got rye in his wrists."

​Barley is a cream-coloured grain that originated in the Levant around the time that agriculture was invented. It has a slightly nutty and earthy flavour. It is low in gluten and very high in fibre. It also has the unique distinction of being the first form of money used by humans.

Oats are a cream-coloured grain that was cultivated mainly in Northern Europe (and famously in Scotland). They have a subtle and earthy flavour. They have no gluten and compared to other grains are high in protein, which is why breads and pastries cooked with oats seem more wholesome and rich than those made with regular white flour.

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Enjoy your oats hot, warm, or cold. (Goldilox was too picky, don’t you think?) Enjoy it at breakfast time, at lunch, dinner, or as a midnight snack. Take comfort in its mushiness and in its nutritiousness. Laugh at how cheap it is. Life is good and it starts with a bowl of oatmeal. After all, it was probably the first real food you actually ate, and seeing as how you don’t need teeth to eat it, it might just be your last.

Thanks for being here // BC
Written by Erik Veitch