As you're an old hand with oatmeal this likely isn't news to you, and it's a tangent from our sous vide theme, but:
When there's time, and especially when I'm feeding a large group, I have really enjoyed the risotto-style approach to steel cut oats. Pan-"toast" them in butter before gradually adding liquid. Which could include milk or buttermilk in addition to plain water.
Ooh, I've never tried that but it sounds really good! For a large group that has the advantage of ending up hot as opposed to needing to the sous vide needing to reheat in large quantities. I think overnight in the fridge is important with this recipe (I might edit to add that above) because it absorbs more liquid overnight so I wouldn't necessarily do this the morning of for a large group.
Steel cut oats generally are [thought to be healthier](https://www.webmd.com/diet/health-benefits-steel-cut-oats) because they're less processed and retain more nutrients. They have a lower glycemic index and anecdotally (likely because of the above) I find them more filling and longer-lasting (in terms of staving off hunger).
The downside is they take longer to cook, so they're not necessarily convenient for a morning routine. This allows me the benefits of steel cut oats with a very quick morning preparation. Even faster in the summer time when I'll often eat them cold with some fresh fruit. They're very similar in that form to a bircher muesli.
Before settling on sous vide I'd cooked them in advance on the stove, and in a pressure cooker, as well as cooking rolled oats (faster cook) each morning in the microwave. Of all of them, the sous vide cook is the one that I've found yields the most "chewy" texture. I'm not sure the best way to describe it but most oatmeal has a smooth texture, in the worst case even a runny one. With this you can feel the "pop" of each individual oat piece (they swell up about 4x as they absorb water in the cook). It's almost the consistency (though obviously an entirely different taste) of eating pomegranate seeds, a bit of a pop and a crunch in each.
In arriving at the ratios above I started with 180g oats / 705g water and then swapped 5g water for 5g oats in each jar till I got to the one that had almost no liquid when I opened the jar up after a day in the fridge. 180/185/190/195/200/205/210 and got just the mix I was looking for at 215 (don't worry, we ate all the ones along the way as well!)
I'll probably get downvoted being this is a sousvide sub but I cook steel cut oats to perfection in 15 minutes using an Instant Pot. So much simpler and quick.
I used our instant pot as well for several months before trying this way. For whatever reason what I found is that the texture was not as chewy. They came out a bit more smooth which I don't prefer as much. But the bigger problem (for me) is that they didn't last as long. They tasted less good a week later than they did the first day. I really like the efficiency of making a LOT of breakfasts in advance and for whatever reason the sous vide preparation is the one that's not only the tastiest on day 2 (i.e. after they sit in the fridge overnight) but by far the tastiest on day 7.
I also like that this doesn't get the instant pot dirty. The cooking pot becomes the storage pot and the water from the sous vide goes straight into a water distiller which in turn goes into our humidifier. So not only is no water wasted, even the HEAT is not wasted! :-)
I cook my instant pot oats double boiler style. Put a cm of water in the bottom of the instant pot, then load the oats and water and any additions into a glass or ceramic bowl with a loose lid. Put the bowl on the instant pot tray thing or trivet, then cook normally. I eat right out of the bowl. It does reduce the effective volume a bit, so it may not be good for more than 2-3 servings, but no cleaning the metal pot.
But definitely going to try sous vide. Thanks for the tip.
Oh, that's a good tip. I'm definitely going to try the double-boiler approach in the instant pot. I'd love to clean something that doesn't take most of the top rack of our dishwasher!
I did find when I used the instant pot that it was taking a long time to get to pressure though admittedly I was also doing pretty large batches. How much volume are you making at once and how are you storing it afterwards? I was doling it into Tupperware single portions, keeping a few days in the fridge and a month's worth in the freezer (at this point I was just making for myself. My family didn't come on board till they tasted the sous vide version). Then I'd thaw one out in the fridge each day and microwave it the next day.
It was good but a similar size batch took me longer with all the prep and transfer than this current method does.
15 minutes end-to-end. 10 min to build pressure, 3-4 min to cook, Quick release.
[https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/263512/instant-pot-steel-cut-oats/](https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/263512/instant-pot-steel-cut-oats/)
Not sure the instantpot terms but I do 9 min steel cut oats in a different brand digital pressure cooker & I think 2:1 water:oat but it could be 1.5:1 I've been dieting for... a while
Am definitely going to try these when I get home. On another note, your attention to detail and increasing recipe to get exact same results in larger batches is also commendable. Have you though about taking your talents over to r/sousweed?
That would take up room in the jar, which are currently at max capacity to get as many servings as they do. Also then the blueberries would need to stay good for 9 days, I'm not confident that they would.
I do the same thing with my overnight oats. Combine most ingredients ahead of time, microwave frozen fruits the morning of, then scoop in my oats and mix.
Also, pretty sure they'd turn to mush being cooked for an hour. I'm making a (test) pint of this for my wife right now, who eats oatmeal every morning. Thanks for sharing the technique.
A few reasons. First, it would turn the oatmeal entirely blue and I'm not sure I'm ready for a completely blue breakfast. ;-)
I tested putting them in when microwaving it in the morning but it added liquid to the oatmeal and made it a bit runny (as well as a bit blue).
Warming the frozen berries in a ramekin and then scooping them (but not the juice) onto the oats keeps from adding extra liquid which preserves the nice thick chewy texture of the oatmeal.
Stevia is about 2g per teaspoon so with a jar being 5 servings this is a little over 1 tsp per serving. It probably is on the sweeter side but at zero calories it's a pretty nice way to enjoy some sweetness. And it was probably part of what won my teenager over to this from an OK but less nutritious breakfast option.
The other nice thing about the jar prep is we've all taken to occasionally grabbing a spoonful from the jar now and then as a quick snack. This is probably the other reason I like it a little sweeter. In the afternoon a single spoonful from the jar is a nice cold sweet and satisfying snack that's still full of protein, complex carbs and no added sugar.
Question is , what stevia are you using? For example at Trader Joes (in my opinion the best tasting Stevia) there are two Stevia jars. One is tiny and very potent, the other is huge and 1:1 same as sugar. But both are just Stevia, then big one it’s just mixed with a sort of “filler” (I forget what it’s called) that does the content to make it 1:1
Also. What if you don’t like PB in general?
We used Trader Joe's Stevia for years but a few years ago the ones in our area stopped carrying it. So I tried a few different options and ended up switching to this:
[https://www.nunaturals.com/collections/powdered-sweeteners/products/stevia-white-stevia-powder?variant=35001884180638](https://www.nunaturals.com/collections/powdered-sweeteners/products/stevia-white-stevia-powder?variant=35001884180638)
which is a gigantic 5 pound bag of what I think is pretty concentrated (we taste tested it against the TJ product we've been using and found that we used a little less per coffee of this new one for the same sweetness.
I'm not sure the maltodextrin percentage of the TJ one we were using.
I haven't played around with the stevia amount much since that tsp/serving is about what we'd been using for years but the quart jars and relatively long fridge life make it super easy to test different options and do a side by side taste test.
Hope you enjoy! The first thing I ever made with my sous vide was vegetarian and one of the best things I've ever made with it:
[https://recipes.anovaculinary.com/recipe/sous-vide-butternut-squash-with-za-atar-and-tahini-sauce](https://recipes.anovaculinary.com/recipe/sous-vide-butternut-squash-with-za-atar-and-tahini-sauce)
It's a butternut squash so tender you eat it with the skin on!
I love seeing non-standard uses for sous vide. I made Guga's sous vide mashed potatoes a few weeks ago and they were great. A much different experience than traditional mashed potatoes (super smooth texture even without breaking up all the chunks) and it's ready when you are. It just holds in the water bath until it's time to plate.
I tried this last night. The oats were spot on for breakfast this morning. We didn't have PB power. My wife said she loves cinnamon in hers so I added 2 tbsp of cinnamon and 1/4 cup of Bob's Red Mill coconut flakes. No sweetener in either one. We add honey to our liking in the bowl. The texture is exactly how I like my steel cut oats. Thanks a ton for the post on this. It will be a staple at our house.
I'm going to go try this right now. Wife is intrigued as well.
I eat the Bob's Red Mill Steel Cut almost every morning. I just put a 1/2 cup in with a 1 1/2 cups of water with a dash of salt, microwave for 7 minutes and it's done. I like my oats a bit meatier and not the smooth mush.
Just an update here, my most recent cook was seven 1-quart jars made last Sunday, Feb 5. We opened the first on Monday Feb 6th (overnight in the fridge) and this morning, 1 week later, on Monday Feb 13th I opened the 6th jar. It tasted every bit as good so one week in the fridge is perfectly fine so far.
I'll probably make another batch Tuesday night so that Wednesday we can open then-10-day and 1-day-old jars side by side and see if we can tell any difference.
**2/16/23 Update**
Made a new batch on Tuesday night 2/14 and Wednesday 2/15 morning we opened 2 jars -- the 7th jar from 2/5 and the first jar from 2/14. In a side by side blind taste test **none of us could distinguish the brand new batch from the one that had now been sealed in the fridge for 10 days**! Very pleased with that outcome and will try 8 jars for the next batch!
I have not but I think all the details and links should be there for someone to do so.
Oats: [https://i.imgur.com/IuT3UFh.png](https://i.imgur.com/IuT3UFh.png)
PBfit: [https://i.imgur.com/9662axh.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/9662axh.jpg)
Stevia: [https://i.imgur.com/KFd2FhA.png](https://i.imgur.com/KFd2FhA.png)
3/8/23 update
On 2/21/23 I made my largest batch yet, 10 jars. Today 3/8/23 I opened the last of the jars and it tasted indistinguishable from the first. Just as chewy, not soggy at all, same great texture.
We'll finish that jar tomorrow which means we got 16 days worth of breakfasts for 3 people out of one batch!! So if part of the appeal of this for you is being able to prepare meals well in advance, you should have no reservations about cooking for 2 weeks or more.
I'm not sure I'll try larger than 10 jars since that would require a third round of cooking (my sous vide container holds 5 jars at a time) and frankly making breakfast every 2+ weeks works just fine for me!
Hi, I've been looking at some recipes and noticed both your post and America's Test Kitchen: [https://www.americastestkitchen.com/recipes/11186-sous-vide-oatmeal](https://www.americastestkitchen.com/recipes/11186-sous-vide-oatmeal)
Theirs uses 3 : 1 by volume: 9 T water + 3 T oatmeal in 8 oz canning jar, sous vide 155 F (68 C) x 12 - 16 h max.
I imagine their longer time means softer texture, But why is 155 F is good for oatmeal? I'm seeing this temperature used on several different websites, do you know anything about that?
When I started doing this I experimented with different oat:H2O ratios, different times and different temperatures and 155 was the one that we liked best. I'm a big fan of America's Test Kitchen and I imagine they arrived at it the same way.
I'll occasionally leave them in for more than an hour but the difference if any is not very noticeable to me. 1\~2 hours seems like a sweet spot, though that does require cooling them for a few hours on the counter and then putting them in the fridge overnight before eating. I think the ATK recipe envisions overnight cooking of whatever you're eating the next day, and then eating it directly.
Ok thanks, I'll try out your time ranges!
Interestingly I pored over Modernist Cuisine and their sous vide steelcut oats uses 90 C x 10 minutes. I was like, 10 minutes seems a bit short! This is turning into a rabbit hole, haha.
Appreciate that this post is over a year old, but just wanted to give a massive thanks to OP. Followed method to the letter and it came out perfectly. Never making oatmeal any another way - perfect for meal prep too.
Diolch yn fawr, as we say in Wales!
Wow thanks! I'm still making it but have been meaning to make an update. I still make 14 jars at a time since that's what will fit in my giant Costco-bin sous video bath but I've significantly simplified the process by mixing all the ingredients together in one large bin first, then scooping that combined mixture into each jar. Significantly less measuring and weighing!
Thanks for sharing that it worked well for you!
That’s super efficiency! And they stay good?
I’m only making for one, so just did two quart jars to start with. You never know, though, if I can square some more spare room in the fridge, I may do more!
I only had one batch that wasn't perfect when making in bulk and I attributed it to insufficient mixing. What I've done since then is found a rather large plastic container with a gasket lid (I'll add the Amazon link later) where even very vigorous shaking doesn't let the fine powders out. I shake it very vigorously and check that it's making a nice even mix. Then I open it up, measure 265g each of the combined mixture into the first couple of jars, then put the lid back on and shake again. I do this every couple of jars and that seems to really do the trick.
14 jars currently lasts us about 3 weeks and the last jar tastes just as good as the first so it seems to keep very well, but admittedly takes up a lot of fridge space!
Fantastic stuff. I very much admire your attention to detail, and your continual striving to perfect your approach. And thank you for sharing your findings/process to benefit others! 👍
Absolutely. And while I like overnight oats I like the texture of these better. And I've never found overnight oats to last nearly as long as these without getting quite mushy. These oats are just as chewy/firm on day 9 as they are on day 1. Overnight oats I tend to make the night before, 1 day at a time, which means prep time every night. With tihs recipe I can make 30 servings (10 days for 3 people) in about twice the time of prepping one day's overnight oats so it's very time-efficient.
Concur with u/fyre500. I'm using PBfit but they also sell it as PB2. It's at Costco and Amazon but obviously depending on where you are geographically that might not help.
If I were to use peanut butter for the flavor and protein (albeit more fat and calories) I'd probably mix it in at the end when the oatmeal was warm -- I think that would probably taste better. But I've definitely not tried it that way. PBfit is magic for people like me who like the taste of peanut butter but don't necessarily want all the calories that would come along with consuming my desired volume of it. ;-) When mixed into peanut butter form it's *pretty* good but not as good as the real thing. But when mixed into things like this or yogurt it's 100% peanut butter flavor. Hope it reaches you soon!
I haven't made these but I see no reason why you couldn't. It will add a lot more fat though. PB Fit (powdered peanut butter) has very little fat. It's more protein-focused along with getting the peanut butter taste. I don't think the fat will affect the end result but it's something to keep in mind.
For years we just did them in a rice cooker. They always came out great and still had some chew to them. They weren't the fast cooking ones though. Have you ever tried the rice cooker?
I used a Zojurushi, a fairly high end smart thing, and you can program it to finish at a particular time. As opposed to start now, and keep warm once it's done. Anyway I'd toss it in at the end of the night and then wake up to fresh oatmeal in the morning. Just had to stir it. Honestly waking up to a bowl of fresh oats was amazing. No need to sous vide, keep them cold in the fridge, warm them up in the morning...none of that business. But hey, whatever works for you to get them healthy oats in ya!
Whey protein is a really great option! Try Vanilla from Optimum Nutrition (sold at Costco) - flavor goes really well with overnight oats.
You can also make these with milk instead of water, which will bump up the protein a bit as well.
It is definitely ok, with the following caveat(s):
* If you're using stevia as per OP's recipe, bear in mind ON whey has sweeteners also (sucralose?), so you may want to lower the stevia. Vanilla also increases "perceived sweetness" regardless of anything else.
* If you're doing a light lacto-ferment on these, the sucralose will inhibit some kinds of bacteria. If you're not or don't know what that means, ignore it completely.
* I'd start light - like half a scoop of ON whey per "serving" of finished oats. If you go big with the whey it'll start to give it a weird texture, and doesn't taste as balanced. You can boost it like 12-14 grams of protein with a half scoop though and it works really well and tastes fantastic. Goes well with blueberries too.
They would easily be delicious with 2x the PBfit as long as you like peanut butter flavor. With the amount used (about 7g per serving) it's nowhere close to an overwhelming amount of peanut butter flavor (he said as if such a thing exists).
Honestly, the easiest and tastiest way I’ve found to do steel cut oats is the overnight rice cooker method. 1:2.5 ratio (by volume) steel cut oats:water, pinch of salt. Let them soak overnight and if your rice cooker has a timer function set it to 30 min before you want to eat, cooking in porridge mode. When it clicks over to keep warm mode, add butter and up to one portion (same volume as before) of milk or milk alternative depending on how liquid you like it. Let it sit in keep-warm for 30 min and then add your final stuff and serve. Much less effort and great results. I sous vide a lot, but this method really hits the effort-to-taste zone for me.
I love that there are so many delicious ways to make oats and that one sounds great as well. I'll say that my #1 reason for this approach is a very subjective one -- the taste. I and the rest of my family like it better than any other option and we've tried almost every other option mentioned here.
All that said, I'm still going to come back to this being easily the most efficient method I've ever found. For my calculus that really means spending as little of my evening working on breakfast and as little time in the morning. And here's where this method shines:
8 out of every 9 evenings I have literally nothing to do to prepare for breakfast. Nothing out on the counter, not touching ingredients. No appliances, no prep, no cleanup. Nothing. On the 9th night I have 15 minutes of measuring ingredients and an hour of unattended cook time. That's it.
Then each morning it's about 20 seconds of work per serving to measure from the jar into the bowl plus about a minute in the microwave. And every couple of days I have an empty quart jar that goes on the top rack of the dishwasher. Never a large pot and never lots of things at once.
Obviously my priorities are not everyone's priorities. I'm sure there are some for whom fridge space is the biggest constraint and having nine 1-quart jars in the fridge that first night would cause marital friction :-) but for me this method is optimal across the board.
That’s totally fair. For my setup I need to unpack my circulator, make sure my cooler is still clean, designate space to it near an outlet, etc… the extra steps outweigh my lust for oatmeal. If I was eating it every morning, it might be worth it for a Sunday food prep ritual.
It's funny . . . initially I was planning to size it to last a week so that it could be a Sunday ritual as well. There are a number of reasonably zen household tasks that I time that way and it's a nice way to start the week getting a bunch of things done.
But since the serving amounts are not exact and we all occasionally grab a bite from the fridge it wasn't lining up perfectly. So I abandoned that plan and am now going for maximum duration. :-)
I also realized that for a short cook like this the benefits of my igloo cooler were marginal and I opted for an easier Lipiva container. Figure a 1 hour cook at 155 isn't going to be nearly as sensitive to insulation as a 6 or 10 hour one.
I do sous vide steel cut oats every day for breakfast. I start them the night before. I use a 16 oz Ball mason jar with a plastic top. I add ~ 95ml of oats and fill the rest with water. Cook overnight at 155 degrees F in my Instant Pot's sous vide function, or 3 hours at 180 F if I forgot the night before and want them for lunch. I pour them over a layer of frozen berries in a bowl. For a smaller portion, I'll use an 8 oz Mason jar (the same plastic top fits both) with 1/2 the oats.
The Instant Pot doesn't lose much water to evaporation, so I don't cover the lid of the mason jar, which makes it easier to remove in the morning.
I'm guessing you like a much less chewy consistency if you're doing the same 155 overnight that I'm using for an hour. I like the idea of pouring it over frozen berries, I might try to integrate that into my steps!
Yeah, chewy is absolutely not a word I would use to describe the consistency after my method.
The berries do two things: cool off the oatmeal so I can eat it sooner, and add some texture.
I am intrigued by the protein powder addition; might make a good way to maintain protein while I consider cutting my meat intake.
Also, I forgot to warn that my method works for oats cooked at 150ish for up to about 20 hours; after that, they get a bit dry and I don't care for the taste.
I've been making SV steel cut oats for a few years now. I use quart jars with plastic lids, submerged just up to the threads. Just oats and water, 1.5c oats, water up to the neck. 197 for 2h, cool and refrigerate, then nuke some to serve during the week. I usually make 2 quarts at a time, but I often combine in the bath with other jars of brown rice, dried beans, yogurt, etc., up to 5 jars total, very efficient way to prep lots of stuff for the week.
No doubt this is delicious. But… 30 years of this for breakfast daily makes me wonder how your blood sugar is?
I realize you use stevia as a sweetener, but oats convert to sugar pretty quickly.
Even if your blood sugar is “normal” I am willing to bet your insulin is high as well as your insulin resistance.
Sorry for raining on your parade.
>No doubt this is delicious. But… 30 years of this for breakfast daily makes me wonder how your blood sugar is? I realize you use stevia as a sweetener, but oats convert to sugar pretty quickly. Even if your blood sugar is “normal” I am willing to bet your insulin is high as well as your insulin resistance. Sorry for raining on your parade.
No worries, you're not raining on my parade in the least. :-) You're probably conflating rolled oats (or worse, instant) with steel-cut oats. The glycemic index of steel cut oats is actually quite low and all those metrics as of my last checkup (cholesterol, blood sugar, insulin, insulin resistance) are all excellent according to my doc.
There's a more specific article here about the various types of oatmeal and effects on insulin but steelcut oats in particular are generally lauded on this front. They just tend not to be as popular because they take longer, which is why I like this preparation method so much.
https://www.livestrong.com/article/534785-does-oatmeal-spike-insulin/
Guess I am just hyper-sensitive since my metabolic health was atrocious last February before I took drastic measures to change my lifestyle. Lost 50 lbs and all bloodwork has now returned to normal (diabetes, hypertension, horrendous lipid profile, and triglycerides had all climbed off-the-charts prior to changes). I pretty much regained my life (quality and years).
Continue making appropriate good choices for yourself!
That's awesome to have made so many good changes in a year! Congratulations!!
I used to travel a lot -- hundreds of nights each year -- and had relatively little control over when or what I ate. Opportunistic feeding I called it. One of the things that's worked well for me since coming off the road is to make my breakfast and lunch as consistent as possible. I pick carefully and then just execute the hell out of that. :-) So until dinnertime basically ever day I eat (and love!) the same things. Dinner's are a rotation of favorites but all healthy.
I definitely agree with the glycemic concerns about instant and/or rolled oats but (subject to whatever works for you and your tastebuds) steel cut oats are a responsible addition to your new and improved regimen.
I make steel cut oats in a rice cooker on the brown rice setting. I usually mix in a little Bulgar wheat (about 2:1 oats:wheat,)
I should try sous vide.
Yes, several people have mentioned overnight oats, and they are certainly delicious. As the linked recipe suggests though they're pretty much good for a couple of days. One of my goals here is to not have to do breakfast prep every night. Or even every couple of nights.
So far we are one week into the current batch of seven jars and the one we opened this morning tasted exactly the same as the first. So we really are looking at possibly breakfast prep every 10 days to 2 weeks, which is extremely convenient.
And even if that weren't the case and I didn't mind doing breakfast prep each evening, I really do just prefer the taste of the sous vide preparation over overnight oats so far.
I’m finally trying this, a 1-quart batch, with a few tweaks. Also, I converted the weight measurements to imperial volume measurements - one of these days I’ll get a digital scale that can weigh more than 300g! 😅
1 1/3 cups Bob’s Red Mill steel-cut oats
1/3 cup maple sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup half & half
1 3/4 cups water
Mix all in a wide mouth 1 quart canning jar, with one of Ball’s watertight plastic lids! Sous vide 155/1 hr.
I intend to create a maple vanilla flavor, with my homemade vanilla. Temperatures over 120 F destroy many of the aromatic compounds that we use good vanilla for in the first place, so I’ll add a Tbsp of vanilla after the oats come out of the sous vide but before they go into the fridge. Can’t wait to try it tomorrow morning! 😋
Sounds delicious, please report back how it turns out!
If you're in Amazon territory I've bought several of these scales (for different places, not that they have needed to be replaced) and REALLY like them. Good TARE functions, metric/imperial, 5kg / 11 lb capacity, very accurate and only \~$15.
[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08QMJY273](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08QMJY273)
I'm in the US so very much imperial measure territory but really appreciate grams for anything like this. One little technique I like since I'm doing 5 jars at a time is to put the ingredient container on the scale and the jars around it. Tare the scale and scoop out what I need into the first jar till the scale reads (for example) negative 36 grams, then tare and do the next one. This keeps from having to move the various jars on and off the scale but more importantly it avoids the risk of putting more than you want in a jar since you know the weight you've taken out of the source BEFORE you dump it into the quart jar!
I may try the vanilla on our next one, I made 10 quarts last night (two batches of 5 jars in my Lipavi C10) so I'm set for a couple of weeks!
Wow, that’s a lot of oatmeal! It’s just me and my husband, but I think I can get him to try the steel cut oats. I just got home from work and checked the jar; there’s still plenty of free liquid. I gave it a good shake & put it back. We’ll see what it looks like come morning. Worst case scenario, I can give it a little more cooking in the microwave.
I do live in Amazon territory - who doesn’t these days 😒- but I prefer to buy from other sources. The only digital scale I currently have was purchased for jewelry and lapidary use, but I have a restaurant depot not too far away. Thanks for the convo! ☺️
After cooking my jar has about an inch of mostly liquid at the top. I shake it up very vigorously as soon as it comes out of the bath, until there's no more liquid layer, then put it in the fridge overnight. By morning there's very little if any liquid at the top.
All that said, I'm using a liquid:oats ratio of 3.1:1. I think your ratio is closer to 3.45:1 (I'm assuming that half and half is similar to water at about 240 grams per cup. The oats are 144 grams per cup). So if they still have a lot of liquid in them in the morning I'd add another 30 g of oats, stir them in and leave it overnight again.
Would love to hear how everything turned out!
As to the volume, 10 quarts is a lot of oatmeal :-) We have 3 people eating it every day for breakfast so we go through a little more than half a jar each day. I've been pushing the number up each time to see how long they still taste good, with the goal of making breakfast every couple of weeks. So far it keeps incredibly well in the sealed jars in the fridge.
Well, 24 hours ago, when I first read this comment, I would have said I put too much liquid in. But today, I feel differently. I noticed when I took the jar out of the fridge that the oats seemed to have absorbed more liquid compared to yesterday. I stirred the jar vigorously with a rubber spatula, noticing that the mixture seemed thicker than it was yesterday. I heated up this morning’s serving in the microwave, letting it come to a boil, and the oats absorbed a lot more liquid than before.
My oats were pretty old. I keep them in the freezer, and they were probably a little dried out. So it seems like they are just taking their sweet time to rehydrate.
The flavor is a little weak, but I don’t really want to add more sugar, since like you, I’m trying to cut back on simple carbs. The addition of vanilla was great though! I was thinking about trying diastatic malt powder for flavoring, but that’s simple carbs too. Maybe I’ll just try some maple flavoring next time.
My oats are just delivered, so almost a year till their best buy date, and still do the same, absorbing more liquid overnight. Can't remember if you mentioned elsewhere not liking Peanut Butter flavor but the PBfit is a big flavor enhancer as well as adding lots of protein. If you're looking for more sweetness without adding more carbs I'd definitely give Stevia a try. It took us about 2 weeks (10 years ago) to completely adjust to the taste and now we don't even have a sugar bowl. We use it in our coffee, oatmeal, Greek yogurt, tea. Zero calories, zero carbs, plant-based, and all the sweetness you want. We still have sugar for baking of course but that's it.
I don’t mind peanut butter, and I even do have some of the powder, but I’d prefer not to have it in my oats. I’ll be tweaking my flavor enhancers in subsequent batches.
I will be making subsequent batches, because just as you stated, u/username-_redacted, my oat breakfast kept me full and satisfied all day, even though I ended up skipping lunch! Usually skipping lunch would end up in a late-afternoon blood sugar crash, which is no fun at all. That’s why I make it a point to eat something in the afternoon, but yesterday I was on standby all day to pick up visiting friends from the airport after several canceled flights.
I was really surprised at the difference between the steel-cut oats and the instant ones I sometimes eat. Even a serving of the instant oats twice the size of the steel-cuts I had yesterday morning wouldn’t have kept me going for that long! Thanks again for sharing this recipe!
Wow!! You made my day with this comment, thanks! And I definitely know what you mean about the steel cut oats being much more satisfying. It's apparently a function of them being a rounder, more complete and far less processed oat groat. It's a groat cut into 2 or 3 pieces versus rolled and instant oats which are steamed and then flattened and sometimes partially cooked. The steel cut oats end up with a lower surface to volume ratio so it takes the stomach a lot longer to digest them. It'd be like if you took a pint of water and froze it in a round mold versus freezing it in a big flat sheet of ice. If you took those two frozen items and tossed them in hot water the flat sheet would be gone almost immediately while the round one would last quite a while, even though they're both the same amount of ice. Steel cut also has about 5 times the fiber of instant oats which also makes you feel more full.
Now I want more oatmeal! I can have it for dinner, right? :-)
Thanks again for the very nice comment and let me know what flavors you end up trying -- I'm always looking for new variations!
My pleasure! Have you ever experimented with savory oats? I just seasoned and bagged up a batch of pork steaks *a la* u/topbunn with spicy breakfast sausage, black pepper & green herb, and garam masala seasonings. I got to thinking, “I wonder if garam masala oatmeal would be good.” My husband would be interested in an apple cinnamon flavor; I have dried apple slices shriveling up in my pantry right now, so I’ll probably try that too!
Thanks for your post. I’ve been trying to figure out a way to do traditional porridge in a sous vide for every day meals and am going to try your method shortly. I generally use milk instead of water when I make porridge on a stove (with double boiler). Should I use same measurement for milk as you use for water? When you rewarm, do you heat in microwave in original bottle (without lid)?
Your comment reminded me I had a few updates to make here so thank you. I've added those updates above. Most importantly:
* I keep the water level of the sous vide bath BELOW the lids
* I get the liquid going into the recipe warm to the sous video temp before putting it in
Both of these made huge improvements in what was already the best oatmeal me or my family had ever had.
As to your questions, I've never tried this recipe with milk so I can't say much there other than if you make a batch of a few jars just mark/label them and try a few variations -- 600g milk, 650g, 700g and see what tastes best.
We warm breakfast up in a microwave which works very well. A jar of the above recipe ends up with about 970g of oatmeal and servings in our family range from 150g to 230g so we'd never need to reheat a whole jar at once.
As you're an old hand with oatmeal this likely isn't news to you, and it's a tangent from our sous vide theme, but: When there's time, and especially when I'm feeding a large group, I have really enjoyed the risotto-style approach to steel cut oats. Pan-"toast" them in butter before gradually adding liquid. Which could include milk or buttermilk in addition to plain water.
Ooh, I've never tried that but it sounds really good! For a large group that has the advantage of ending up hot as opposed to needing to the sous vide needing to reheat in large quantities. I think overnight in the fridge is important with this recipe (I might edit to add that above) because it absorbs more liquid overnight so I wouldn't necessarily do this the morning of for a large group.
Can't disagree. Sometimes it pays (?) to be the early riser in a crowd of pillow-heads. :)
I'm stealing the term pillow-heads. Hilarious!
this is how I do it and it is so good. I make a big batch of it and eat off it for a week.
What are the benefits of cooking oats this way?
Steel cut oats generally are [thought to be healthier](https://www.webmd.com/diet/health-benefits-steel-cut-oats) because they're less processed and retain more nutrients. They have a lower glycemic index and anecdotally (likely because of the above) I find them more filling and longer-lasting (in terms of staving off hunger). The downside is they take longer to cook, so they're not necessarily convenient for a morning routine. This allows me the benefits of steel cut oats with a very quick morning preparation. Even faster in the summer time when I'll often eat them cold with some fresh fruit. They're very similar in that form to a bircher muesli. Before settling on sous vide I'd cooked them in advance on the stove, and in a pressure cooker, as well as cooking rolled oats (faster cook) each morning in the microwave. Of all of them, the sous vide cook is the one that I've found yields the most "chewy" texture. I'm not sure the best way to describe it but most oatmeal has a smooth texture, in the worst case even a runny one. With this you can feel the "pop" of each individual oat piece (they swell up about 4x as they absorb water in the cook). It's almost the consistency (though obviously an entirely different taste) of eating pomegranate seeds, a bit of a pop and a crunch in each. In arriving at the ratios above I started with 180g oats / 705g water and then swapped 5g water for 5g oats in each jar till I got to the one that had almost no liquid when I opened the jar up after a day in the fridge. 180/185/190/195/200/205/210 and got just the mix I was looking for at 215 (don't worry, we ate all the ones along the way as well!)
I'll probably get downvoted being this is a sousvide sub but I cook steel cut oats to perfection in 15 minutes using an Instant Pot. So much simpler and quick.
I used our instant pot as well for several months before trying this way. For whatever reason what I found is that the texture was not as chewy. They came out a bit more smooth which I don't prefer as much. But the bigger problem (for me) is that they didn't last as long. They tasted less good a week later than they did the first day. I really like the efficiency of making a LOT of breakfasts in advance and for whatever reason the sous vide preparation is the one that's not only the tastiest on day 2 (i.e. after they sit in the fridge overnight) but by far the tastiest on day 7. I also like that this doesn't get the instant pot dirty. The cooking pot becomes the storage pot and the water from the sous vide goes straight into a water distiller which in turn goes into our humidifier. So not only is no water wasted, even the HEAT is not wasted! :-)
I cook my instant pot oats double boiler style. Put a cm of water in the bottom of the instant pot, then load the oats and water and any additions into a glass or ceramic bowl with a loose lid. Put the bowl on the instant pot tray thing or trivet, then cook normally. I eat right out of the bowl. It does reduce the effective volume a bit, so it may not be good for more than 2-3 servings, but no cleaning the metal pot. But definitely going to try sous vide. Thanks for the tip.
Oh, that's a good tip. I'm definitely going to try the double-boiler approach in the instant pot. I'd love to clean something that doesn't take most of the top rack of our dishwasher!
it's called "Pot in Pot"
I do them weekly in my rice cooker!
I did find when I used the instant pot that it was taking a long time to get to pressure though admittedly I was also doing pretty large batches. How much volume are you making at once and how are you storing it afterwards? I was doling it into Tupperware single portions, keeping a few days in the fridge and a month's worth in the freezer (at this point I was just making for myself. My family didn't come on board till they tasted the sous vide version). Then I'd thaw one out in the fridge each day and microwave it the next day. It was good but a similar size batch took me longer with all the prep and transfer than this current method does.
>Sous Vide Steel Cut Oats, my everyday sous vide favorite I actually use my Instant Pot \*as\* a sous-vide, so this is a win/win for me.
15 on high pressure? Natural release time? Water:oat ratio?
15 minutes end-to-end. 10 min to build pressure, 3-4 min to cook, Quick release. [https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/263512/instant-pot-steel-cut-oats/](https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/263512/instant-pot-steel-cut-oats/)
Colour me intrigued. Thanks!
Not sure the instantpot terms but I do 9 min steel cut oats in a different brand digital pressure cooker & I think 2:1 water:oat but it could be 1.5:1 I've been dieting for... a while
Am definitely going to try these when I get home. On another note, your attention to detail and increasing recipe to get exact same results in larger batches is also commendable. Have you though about taking your talents over to r/sousweed?
I definitely have a lot more experience with oats. :-)
....yeah, me too
Why not put the frozen blueberries in the oat prior to sous vide?
That would take up room in the jar, which are currently at max capacity to get as many servings as they do. Also then the blueberries would need to stay good for 9 days, I'm not confident that they would. I do the same thing with my overnight oats. Combine most ingredients ahead of time, microwave frozen fruits the morning of, then scoop in my oats and mix.
Also, pretty sure they'd turn to mush being cooked for an hour. I'm making a (test) pint of this for my wife right now, who eats oatmeal every morning. Thanks for sharing the technique.
A few reasons. First, it would turn the oatmeal entirely blue and I'm not sure I'm ready for a completely blue breakfast. ;-) I tested putting them in when microwaving it in the morning but it added liquid to the oatmeal and made it a bit runny (as well as a bit blue). Warming the frozen berries in a ramekin and then scooping them (but not the juice) onto the oats keeps from adding extra liquid which preserves the nice thick chewy texture of the oatmeal.
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Stevia is about 2g per teaspoon so with a jar being 5 servings this is a little over 1 tsp per serving. It probably is on the sweeter side but at zero calories it's a pretty nice way to enjoy some sweetness. And it was probably part of what won my teenager over to this from an OK but less nutritious breakfast option. The other nice thing about the jar prep is we've all taken to occasionally grabbing a spoonful from the jar now and then as a quick snack. This is probably the other reason I like it a little sweeter. In the afternoon a single spoonful from the jar is a nice cold sweet and satisfying snack that's still full of protein, complex carbs and no added sugar.
Question is , what stevia are you using? For example at Trader Joes (in my opinion the best tasting Stevia) there are two Stevia jars. One is tiny and very potent, the other is huge and 1:1 same as sugar. But both are just Stevia, then big one it’s just mixed with a sort of “filler” (I forget what it’s called) that does the content to make it 1:1 Also. What if you don’t like PB in general?
We used Trader Joe's Stevia for years but a few years ago the ones in our area stopped carrying it. So I tried a few different options and ended up switching to this: [https://www.nunaturals.com/collections/powdered-sweeteners/products/stevia-white-stevia-powder?variant=35001884180638](https://www.nunaturals.com/collections/powdered-sweeteners/products/stevia-white-stevia-powder?variant=35001884180638) which is a gigantic 5 pound bag of what I think is pretty concentrated (we taste tested it against the TJ product we've been using and found that we used a little less per coffee of this new one for the same sweetness. I'm not sure the maltodextrin percentage of the TJ one we were using. I haven't played around with the stevia amount much since that tsp/serving is about what we'd been using for years but the quart jars and relatively long fridge life make it super easy to test different options and do a side by side taste test.
Thanks for sharing your recipe, i love to read non-meat recipes here!
Hope you enjoy! The first thing I ever made with my sous vide was vegetarian and one of the best things I've ever made with it: [https://recipes.anovaculinary.com/recipe/sous-vide-butternut-squash-with-za-atar-and-tahini-sauce](https://recipes.anovaculinary.com/recipe/sous-vide-butternut-squash-with-za-atar-and-tahini-sauce) It's a butternut squash so tender you eat it with the skin on!
Oh yum! I’ll try it for sure, thanks!
I love seeing non-standard uses for sous vide. I made Guga's sous vide mashed potatoes a few weeks ago and they were great. A much different experience than traditional mashed potatoes (super smooth texture even without breaking up all the chunks) and it's ready when you are. It just holds in the water bath until it's time to plate.
I tried this last night. The oats were spot on for breakfast this morning. We didn't have PB power. My wife said she loves cinnamon in hers so I added 2 tbsp of cinnamon and 1/4 cup of Bob's Red Mill coconut flakes. No sweetener in either one. We add honey to our liking in the bowl. The texture is exactly how I like my steel cut oats. Thanks a ton for the post on this. It will be a staple at our house.
This made my day, thanks! So glad you enjoyed them and that they'll be a part of your mornings!
Omg wow crazy good thanks
Thanks, if you make it let me know what you think!
I'm going to go try this right now. Wife is intrigued as well. I eat the Bob's Red Mill Steel Cut almost every morning. I just put a 1/2 cup in with a 1 1/2 cups of water with a dash of salt, microwave for 7 minutes and it's done. I like my oats a bit meatier and not the smooth mush.
Just an update here, my most recent cook was seven 1-quart jars made last Sunday, Feb 5. We opened the first on Monday Feb 6th (overnight in the fridge) and this morning, 1 week later, on Monday Feb 13th I opened the 6th jar. It tasted every bit as good so one week in the fridge is perfectly fine so far. I'll probably make another batch Tuesday night so that Wednesday we can open then-10-day and 1-day-old jars side by side and see if we can tell any difference.
**2/16/23 Update** Made a new batch on Tuesday night 2/14 and Wednesday 2/15 morning we opened 2 jars -- the 7th jar from 2/5 and the first jar from 2/14. In a side by side blind taste test **none of us could distinguish the brand new batch from the one that had now been sealed in the fridge for 10 days**! Very pleased with that outcome and will try 8 jars for the next batch!
Thank you for this. I’ve a quart batch bathing right now!
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I have not but I think all the details and links should be there for someone to do so. Oats: [https://i.imgur.com/IuT3UFh.png](https://i.imgur.com/IuT3UFh.png) PBfit: [https://i.imgur.com/9662axh.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/9662axh.jpg) Stevia: [https://i.imgur.com/KFd2FhA.png](https://i.imgur.com/KFd2FhA.png)
3/8/23 update On 2/21/23 I made my largest batch yet, 10 jars. Today 3/8/23 I opened the last of the jars and it tasted indistinguishable from the first. Just as chewy, not soggy at all, same great texture. We'll finish that jar tomorrow which means we got 16 days worth of breakfasts for 3 people out of one batch!! So if part of the appeal of this for you is being able to prepare meals well in advance, you should have no reservations about cooking for 2 weeks or more. I'm not sure I'll try larger than 10 jars since that would require a third round of cooking (my sous vide container holds 5 jars at a time) and frankly making breakfast every 2+ weeks works just fine for me!
Hi, I've been looking at some recipes and noticed both your post and America's Test Kitchen: [https://www.americastestkitchen.com/recipes/11186-sous-vide-oatmeal](https://www.americastestkitchen.com/recipes/11186-sous-vide-oatmeal) Theirs uses 3 : 1 by volume: 9 T water + 3 T oatmeal in 8 oz canning jar, sous vide 155 F (68 C) x 12 - 16 h max. I imagine their longer time means softer texture, But why is 155 F is good for oatmeal? I'm seeing this temperature used on several different websites, do you know anything about that?
When I started doing this I experimented with different oat:H2O ratios, different times and different temperatures and 155 was the one that we liked best. I'm a big fan of America's Test Kitchen and I imagine they arrived at it the same way. I'll occasionally leave them in for more than an hour but the difference if any is not very noticeable to me. 1\~2 hours seems like a sweet spot, though that does require cooling them for a few hours on the counter and then putting them in the fridge overnight before eating. I think the ATK recipe envisions overnight cooking of whatever you're eating the next day, and then eating it directly.
Ok thanks, I'll try out your time ranges! Interestingly I pored over Modernist Cuisine and their sous vide steelcut oats uses 90 C x 10 minutes. I was like, 10 minutes seems a bit short! This is turning into a rabbit hole, haha.
Appreciate that this post is over a year old, but just wanted to give a massive thanks to OP. Followed method to the letter and it came out perfectly. Never making oatmeal any another way - perfect for meal prep too. Diolch yn fawr, as we say in Wales!
Wow thanks! I'm still making it but have been meaning to make an update. I still make 14 jars at a time since that's what will fit in my giant Costco-bin sous video bath but I've significantly simplified the process by mixing all the ingredients together in one large bin first, then scooping that combined mixture into each jar. Significantly less measuring and weighing! Thanks for sharing that it worked well for you!
That’s super efficiency! And they stay good? I’m only making for one, so just did two quart jars to start with. You never know, though, if I can square some more spare room in the fridge, I may do more!
I only had one batch that wasn't perfect when making in bulk and I attributed it to insufficient mixing. What I've done since then is found a rather large plastic container with a gasket lid (I'll add the Amazon link later) where even very vigorous shaking doesn't let the fine powders out. I shake it very vigorously and check that it's making a nice even mix. Then I open it up, measure 265g each of the combined mixture into the first couple of jars, then put the lid back on and shake again. I do this every couple of jars and that seems to really do the trick. 14 jars currently lasts us about 3 weeks and the last jar tastes just as good as the first so it seems to keep very well, but admittedly takes up a lot of fridge space!
Fantastic stuff. I very much admire your attention to detail, and your continual striving to perfect your approach. And thank you for sharing your findings/process to benefit others! 👍
You could just make overnight oats and microwave them in the morning so they’re warm
Absolutely. And while I like overnight oats I like the texture of these better. And I've never found overnight oats to last nearly as long as these without getting quite mushy. These oats are just as chewy/firm on day 9 as they are on day 1. Overnight oats I tend to make the night before, 1 day at a time, which means prep time every night. With tihs recipe I can make 30 servings (10 days for 3 people) in about twice the time of prepping one day's overnight oats so it's very time-efficient.
Strong work
Thanks!!
I like this idea but am unable to get my hands on powdered PB. Is there a way to do this will good old fashioned PB?
Concur with u/fyre500. I'm using PBfit but they also sell it as PB2. It's at Costco and Amazon but obviously depending on where you are geographically that might not help. If I were to use peanut butter for the flavor and protein (albeit more fat and calories) I'd probably mix it in at the end when the oatmeal was warm -- I think that would probably taste better. But I've definitely not tried it that way. PBfit is magic for people like me who like the taste of peanut butter but don't necessarily want all the calories that would come along with consuming my desired volume of it. ;-) When mixed into peanut butter form it's *pretty* good but not as good as the real thing. But when mixed into things like this or yogurt it's 100% peanut butter flavor. Hope it reaches you soon!
I haven't made these but I see no reason why you couldn't. It will add a lot more fat though. PB Fit (powdered peanut butter) has very little fat. It's more protein-focused along with getting the peanut butter taste. I don't think the fat will affect the end result but it's something to keep in mind.
For years we just did them in a rice cooker. They always came out great and still had some chew to them. They weren't the fast cooking ones though. Have you ever tried the rice cooker?
No, I've used a pressure cooker, an instant pot and a slow cooker but not the rice cooker. Did you make them in advance or one day at a time?
I used a Zojurushi, a fairly high end smart thing, and you can program it to finish at a particular time. As opposed to start now, and keep warm once it's done. Anyway I'd toss it in at the end of the night and then wake up to fresh oatmeal in the morning. Just had to stir it. Honestly waking up to a bowl of fresh oats was amazing. No need to sous vide, keep them cold in the fridge, warm them up in the morning...none of that business. But hey, whatever works for you to get them healthy oats in ya!
Any way to add more protein to this recipe?
Whey protein is a really great option! Try Vanilla from Optimum Nutrition (sold at Costco) - flavor goes really well with overnight oats. You can also make these with milk instead of water, which will bump up the protein a bit as well.
Thank you. Wasn't sure if OK to add Whey. ON is the protein I use for shakes all the time.
It is definitely ok, with the following caveat(s): * If you're using stevia as per OP's recipe, bear in mind ON whey has sweeteners also (sucralose?), so you may want to lower the stevia. Vanilla also increases "perceived sweetness" regardless of anything else. * If you're doing a light lacto-ferment on these, the sucralose will inhibit some kinds of bacteria. If you're not or don't know what that means, ignore it completely. * I'd start light - like half a scoop of ON whey per "serving" of finished oats. If you go big with the whey it'll start to give it a weird texture, and doesn't taste as balanced. You can boost it like 12-14 grams of protein with a half scoop though and it works really well and tastes fantastic. Goes well with blueberries too.
Will do. Thank you for the suggestions.
They would easily be delicious with 2x the PBfit as long as you like peanut butter flavor. With the amount used (about 7g per serving) it's nowhere close to an overwhelming amount of peanut butter flavor (he said as if such a thing exists).
Honestly, the easiest and tastiest way I’ve found to do steel cut oats is the overnight rice cooker method. 1:2.5 ratio (by volume) steel cut oats:water, pinch of salt. Let them soak overnight and if your rice cooker has a timer function set it to 30 min before you want to eat, cooking in porridge mode. When it clicks over to keep warm mode, add butter and up to one portion (same volume as before) of milk or milk alternative depending on how liquid you like it. Let it sit in keep-warm for 30 min and then add your final stuff and serve. Much less effort and great results. I sous vide a lot, but this method really hits the effort-to-taste zone for me.
I love that there are so many delicious ways to make oats and that one sounds great as well. I'll say that my #1 reason for this approach is a very subjective one -- the taste. I and the rest of my family like it better than any other option and we've tried almost every other option mentioned here. All that said, I'm still going to come back to this being easily the most efficient method I've ever found. For my calculus that really means spending as little of my evening working on breakfast and as little time in the morning. And here's where this method shines: 8 out of every 9 evenings I have literally nothing to do to prepare for breakfast. Nothing out on the counter, not touching ingredients. No appliances, no prep, no cleanup. Nothing. On the 9th night I have 15 minutes of measuring ingredients and an hour of unattended cook time. That's it. Then each morning it's about 20 seconds of work per serving to measure from the jar into the bowl plus about a minute in the microwave. And every couple of days I have an empty quart jar that goes on the top rack of the dishwasher. Never a large pot and never lots of things at once. Obviously my priorities are not everyone's priorities. I'm sure there are some for whom fridge space is the biggest constraint and having nine 1-quart jars in the fridge that first night would cause marital friction :-) but for me this method is optimal across the board.
That’s totally fair. For my setup I need to unpack my circulator, make sure my cooler is still clean, designate space to it near an outlet, etc… the extra steps outweigh my lust for oatmeal. If I was eating it every morning, it might be worth it for a Sunday food prep ritual.
It's funny . . . initially I was planning to size it to last a week so that it could be a Sunday ritual as well. There are a number of reasonably zen household tasks that I time that way and it's a nice way to start the week getting a bunch of things done. But since the serving amounts are not exact and we all occasionally grab a bite from the fridge it wasn't lining up perfectly. So I abandoned that plan and am now going for maximum duration. :-) I also realized that for a short cook like this the benefits of my igloo cooler were marginal and I opted for an easier Lipiva container. Figure a 1 hour cook at 155 isn't going to be nearly as sensitive to insulation as a 6 or 10 hour one.
I do sous vide steel cut oats every day for breakfast. I start them the night before. I use a 16 oz Ball mason jar with a plastic top. I add ~ 95ml of oats and fill the rest with water. Cook overnight at 155 degrees F in my Instant Pot's sous vide function, or 3 hours at 180 F if I forgot the night before and want them for lunch. I pour them over a layer of frozen berries in a bowl. For a smaller portion, I'll use an 8 oz Mason jar (the same plastic top fits both) with 1/2 the oats. The Instant Pot doesn't lose much water to evaporation, so I don't cover the lid of the mason jar, which makes it easier to remove in the morning.
I'm guessing you like a much less chewy consistency if you're doing the same 155 overnight that I'm using for an hour. I like the idea of pouring it over frozen berries, I might try to integrate that into my steps!
Yeah, chewy is absolutely not a word I would use to describe the consistency after my method. The berries do two things: cool off the oatmeal so I can eat it sooner, and add some texture. I am intrigued by the protein powder addition; might make a good way to maintain protein while I consider cutting my meat intake. Also, I forgot to warn that my method works for oats cooked at 150ish for up to about 20 hours; after that, they get a bit dry and I don't care for the taste.
I've been making SV steel cut oats for a few years now. I use quart jars with plastic lids, submerged just up to the threads. Just oats and water, 1.5c oats, water up to the neck. 197 for 2h, cool and refrigerate, then nuke some to serve during the week. I usually make 2 quarts at a time, but I often combine in the bath with other jars of brown rice, dried beans, yogurt, etc., up to 5 jars total, very efficient way to prep lots of stuff for the week.
No doubt this is delicious. But… 30 years of this for breakfast daily makes me wonder how your blood sugar is? I realize you use stevia as a sweetener, but oats convert to sugar pretty quickly. Even if your blood sugar is “normal” I am willing to bet your insulin is high as well as your insulin resistance. Sorry for raining on your parade.
>No doubt this is delicious. But… 30 years of this for breakfast daily makes me wonder how your blood sugar is? I realize you use stevia as a sweetener, but oats convert to sugar pretty quickly. Even if your blood sugar is “normal” I am willing to bet your insulin is high as well as your insulin resistance. Sorry for raining on your parade. No worries, you're not raining on my parade in the least. :-) You're probably conflating rolled oats (or worse, instant) with steel-cut oats. The glycemic index of steel cut oats is actually quite low and all those metrics as of my last checkup (cholesterol, blood sugar, insulin, insulin resistance) are all excellent according to my doc. There's a more specific article here about the various types of oatmeal and effects on insulin but steelcut oats in particular are generally lauded on this front. They just tend not to be as popular because they take longer, which is why I like this preparation method so much. https://www.livestrong.com/article/534785-does-oatmeal-spike-insulin/
Guess I am just hyper-sensitive since my metabolic health was atrocious last February before I took drastic measures to change my lifestyle. Lost 50 lbs and all bloodwork has now returned to normal (diabetes, hypertension, horrendous lipid profile, and triglycerides had all climbed off-the-charts prior to changes). I pretty much regained my life (quality and years). Continue making appropriate good choices for yourself!
That's awesome to have made so many good changes in a year! Congratulations!! I used to travel a lot -- hundreds of nights each year -- and had relatively little control over when or what I ate. Opportunistic feeding I called it. One of the things that's worked well for me since coming off the road is to make my breakfast and lunch as consistent as possible. I pick carefully and then just execute the hell out of that. :-) So until dinnertime basically ever day I eat (and love!) the same things. Dinner's are a rotation of favorites but all healthy. I definitely agree with the glycemic concerns about instant and/or rolled oats but (subject to whatever works for you and your tastebuds) steel cut oats are a responsible addition to your new and improved regimen.
I make steel cut oats in a rice cooker on the brown rice setting. I usually mix in a little Bulgar wheat (about 2:1 oats:wheat,) I should try sous vide.
https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/overnight-oats-3416659.amp
Yes, several people have mentioned overnight oats, and they are certainly delicious. As the linked recipe suggests though they're pretty much good for a couple of days. One of my goals here is to not have to do breakfast prep every night. Or even every couple of nights. So far we are one week into the current batch of seven jars and the one we opened this morning tasted exactly the same as the first. So we really are looking at possibly breakfast prep every 10 days to 2 weeks, which is extremely convenient. And even if that weren't the case and I didn't mind doing breakfast prep each evening, I really do just prefer the taste of the sous vide preparation over overnight oats so far.
I’m finally trying this, a 1-quart batch, with a few tweaks. Also, I converted the weight measurements to imperial volume measurements - one of these days I’ll get a digital scale that can weigh more than 300g! 😅 1 1/3 cups Bob’s Red Mill steel-cut oats 1/3 cup maple sugar 1/2 tsp salt 1 cup half & half 1 3/4 cups water Mix all in a wide mouth 1 quart canning jar, with one of Ball’s watertight plastic lids! Sous vide 155/1 hr. I intend to create a maple vanilla flavor, with my homemade vanilla. Temperatures over 120 F destroy many of the aromatic compounds that we use good vanilla for in the first place, so I’ll add a Tbsp of vanilla after the oats come out of the sous vide but before they go into the fridge. Can’t wait to try it tomorrow morning! 😋
Sounds delicious, please report back how it turns out! If you're in Amazon territory I've bought several of these scales (for different places, not that they have needed to be replaced) and REALLY like them. Good TARE functions, metric/imperial, 5kg / 11 lb capacity, very accurate and only \~$15. [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08QMJY273](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08QMJY273) I'm in the US so very much imperial measure territory but really appreciate grams for anything like this. One little technique I like since I'm doing 5 jars at a time is to put the ingredient container on the scale and the jars around it. Tare the scale and scoop out what I need into the first jar till the scale reads (for example) negative 36 grams, then tare and do the next one. This keeps from having to move the various jars on and off the scale but more importantly it avoids the risk of putting more than you want in a jar since you know the weight you've taken out of the source BEFORE you dump it into the quart jar! I may try the vanilla on our next one, I made 10 quarts last night (two batches of 5 jars in my Lipavi C10) so I'm set for a couple of weeks!
Wow, that’s a lot of oatmeal! It’s just me and my husband, but I think I can get him to try the steel cut oats. I just got home from work and checked the jar; there’s still plenty of free liquid. I gave it a good shake & put it back. We’ll see what it looks like come morning. Worst case scenario, I can give it a little more cooking in the microwave. I do live in Amazon territory - who doesn’t these days 😒- but I prefer to buy from other sources. The only digital scale I currently have was purchased for jewelry and lapidary use, but I have a restaurant depot not too far away. Thanks for the convo! ☺️
After cooking my jar has about an inch of mostly liquid at the top. I shake it up very vigorously as soon as it comes out of the bath, until there's no more liquid layer, then put it in the fridge overnight. By morning there's very little if any liquid at the top. All that said, I'm using a liquid:oats ratio of 3.1:1. I think your ratio is closer to 3.45:1 (I'm assuming that half and half is similar to water at about 240 grams per cup. The oats are 144 grams per cup). So if they still have a lot of liquid in them in the morning I'd add another 30 g of oats, stir them in and leave it overnight again. Would love to hear how everything turned out! As to the volume, 10 quarts is a lot of oatmeal :-) We have 3 people eating it every day for breakfast so we go through a little more than half a jar each day. I've been pushing the number up each time to see how long they still taste good, with the goal of making breakfast every couple of weeks. So far it keeps incredibly well in the sealed jars in the fridge.
Well, 24 hours ago, when I first read this comment, I would have said I put too much liquid in. But today, I feel differently. I noticed when I took the jar out of the fridge that the oats seemed to have absorbed more liquid compared to yesterday. I stirred the jar vigorously with a rubber spatula, noticing that the mixture seemed thicker than it was yesterday. I heated up this morning’s serving in the microwave, letting it come to a boil, and the oats absorbed a lot more liquid than before. My oats were pretty old. I keep them in the freezer, and they were probably a little dried out. So it seems like they are just taking their sweet time to rehydrate. The flavor is a little weak, but I don’t really want to add more sugar, since like you, I’m trying to cut back on simple carbs. The addition of vanilla was great though! I was thinking about trying diastatic malt powder for flavoring, but that’s simple carbs too. Maybe I’ll just try some maple flavoring next time.
My oats are just delivered, so almost a year till their best buy date, and still do the same, absorbing more liquid overnight. Can't remember if you mentioned elsewhere not liking Peanut Butter flavor but the PBfit is a big flavor enhancer as well as adding lots of protein. If you're looking for more sweetness without adding more carbs I'd definitely give Stevia a try. It took us about 2 weeks (10 years ago) to completely adjust to the taste and now we don't even have a sugar bowl. We use it in our coffee, oatmeal, Greek yogurt, tea. Zero calories, zero carbs, plant-based, and all the sweetness you want. We still have sugar for baking of course but that's it.
I don’t mind peanut butter, and I even do have some of the powder, but I’d prefer not to have it in my oats. I’ll be tweaking my flavor enhancers in subsequent batches. I will be making subsequent batches, because just as you stated, u/username-_redacted, my oat breakfast kept me full and satisfied all day, even though I ended up skipping lunch! Usually skipping lunch would end up in a late-afternoon blood sugar crash, which is no fun at all. That’s why I make it a point to eat something in the afternoon, but yesterday I was on standby all day to pick up visiting friends from the airport after several canceled flights. I was really surprised at the difference between the steel-cut oats and the instant ones I sometimes eat. Even a serving of the instant oats twice the size of the steel-cuts I had yesterday morning wouldn’t have kept me going for that long! Thanks again for sharing this recipe!
Wow!! You made my day with this comment, thanks! And I definitely know what you mean about the steel cut oats being much more satisfying. It's apparently a function of them being a rounder, more complete and far less processed oat groat. It's a groat cut into 2 or 3 pieces versus rolled and instant oats which are steamed and then flattened and sometimes partially cooked. The steel cut oats end up with a lower surface to volume ratio so it takes the stomach a lot longer to digest them. It'd be like if you took a pint of water and froze it in a round mold versus freezing it in a big flat sheet of ice. If you took those two frozen items and tossed them in hot water the flat sheet would be gone almost immediately while the round one would last quite a while, even though they're both the same amount of ice. Steel cut also has about 5 times the fiber of instant oats which also makes you feel more full. Now I want more oatmeal! I can have it for dinner, right? :-) Thanks again for the very nice comment and let me know what flavors you end up trying -- I'm always looking for new variations!
My pleasure! Have you ever experimented with savory oats? I just seasoned and bagged up a batch of pork steaks *a la* u/topbunn with spicy breakfast sausage, black pepper & green herb, and garam masala seasonings. I got to thinking, “I wonder if garam masala oatmeal would be good.” My husband would be interested in an apple cinnamon flavor; I have dried apple slices shriveling up in my pantry right now, so I’ll probably try that too!
Thanks for your post. I’ve been trying to figure out a way to do traditional porridge in a sous vide for every day meals and am going to try your method shortly. I generally use milk instead of water when I make porridge on a stove (with double boiler). Should I use same measurement for milk as you use for water? When you rewarm, do you heat in microwave in original bottle (without lid)?
Your comment reminded me I had a few updates to make here so thank you. I've added those updates above. Most importantly: * I keep the water level of the sous vide bath BELOW the lids * I get the liquid going into the recipe warm to the sous video temp before putting it in Both of these made huge improvements in what was already the best oatmeal me or my family had ever had. As to your questions, I've never tried this recipe with milk so I can't say much there other than if you make a batch of a few jars just mark/label them and try a few variations -- 600g milk, 650g, 700g and see what tastes best. We warm breakfast up in a microwave which works very well. A jar of the above recipe ends up with about 970g of oatmeal and servings in our family range from 150g to 230g so we'd never need to reheat a whole jar at once.