Ten Easy Ways to Eat More Oatmeal
Oats’ Delicious Place in Healthy Cooking Goes Beyond Porridge
Jun 28, 2009
A daily bowl of porridge made with oatmeal can lower cholesterol (especially the ‘bad’ LDL cholesterol), and reduce the risks of high blood pressure (hypertension), Type 2 diabetes and hardening of the arteries (atherosclerosis).
Because oats are a complex carbohydrate, porridge is filling, and is slowly digested, and this can help control unwanted weight gain.
Another benefit comes for people with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), who find oatmeal a soothing carbohydrate that’s easy to digest and helps reduce the unpleasant symptoms of bloating, wind pain and diarrhoea of IBS.
All this from a bowl of porridge every morning!
On top of that, as well as being nutritious, oats are cheap and filling – important values at a time when everyone is watching their food budget.
How to Eat Oatmeal Without Having Porridge
But porridge is not so appealing to cook and eat in hot weather, great though it is as a warming winter breakfast, and there are some people who just don’t like porridge. So, how can the non-porridge eaters enjoy the health benefits of a daily serving of oatmeal?
The answer is simple: find other ways to include oats in your cooking. Fortunately oats – whether the slow cooking rolled oats, the faster cooking quick oats, or the instant variety – can add different flavours and textures to everyday favourites, or inspire new recipes altogether.
Browsing through cookbooks in the library, and searching online recipe collections, it seems there are very many different ways to cook with and enjoy oats. Here are just ten of them.
Ten Ways to Enjoy Oats More Often
- Instant breakfast: add fruit (fresh or dried) and quick oats to yoghurt, mix and leave in fridge overnight
- Waffles: replace half the flour in your waffle mix with instant or quick oats. Whiz all the dry ingredients together in blender before mixing batter
- Pancakes: make oat pancakes using some or all oat flour instead of wheat flour
- Smoothies: make your favourite smoothie, thickening it with a tablespoon of instant oats
- Granola: a quick and easy granola is made with quick oats, coconut, sunflower seeds and nuts, whizzed together in the blender, and mixed with fruit, before baking in a low oven
- Pastry and cookies: grind any sort of oats in the blender to make flour. Substitute ½ cup flour in any pastry or cookie recipe with this oat flour
- Cookies: Quick oats or rolled oats can be added to many cookie recipes for a different texture and flavour. Australia’s famous Anzacs are made with rolled oats, coconut, Golden Syrup (a light molasses) and butter.
- Cakes and muffins: substitute some or most of the flour with quick or instant oats for a different flavour and texture. This is great with carrot cake or banana cake mixtures.
- Crumbing: use instant oats instead of breadcrumbs for coating fish or schnitzels before frying
- Meatloaf: add a cup of quick oats to your favourite meatloaf mix and stretch the expensive meat ingredient further
Want to Know More about Cooking with Oats?
Information about different types of oat products, and many more ideas and recipes for cooking with oats, can be found on the Eat More Oats website.
Oatmeal to Lower Your Cholesterol
More about the benefits of making breakfast part of your daily routine: Why Breakfast is Good for You
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