Try this hack to make breakfast overnight!
So, I was making breakfast this morning and I realized that I’d bet many people don’t know about this totally awesome steel oats oatmeal hack. I’m going to share it with you to make breakfast easier and still provide a filling plant-based breakfast in a hurry.
The trick is to let the steel-cut oats cook themselves so they plump up while you catch some Zzzzz!
Overnight Oatmeal
For my family of 4, (2 adults, 2 children), I take 4 cups of water and boil it in a sauce pot before bed. Then I add 1 cup of steel-cut oats aaaaand scene. I put it in the fridge overnight using an oven mat underneath. In the morning I put it on the stove just to heat it up for 5 minutes or so. It’s steel-cut oats in nearly the same time as instant.
- 4 cups water (boiling)
- 1 cups STEEL CUT oats (do not use rolled oats)
- Set in fridge overnight to cook
- Reheat in morning on stove for 5 minutes
Plant-based Toppings (the best part of oatmeal, the sugar)
If you’re like me and my kids, you won’t eat oatmeal plain. Oatmeal is more like a shuttle for the sugar. LOL – okay so seriously, we all love sugar, but in our house we try to avoid the processed stuff and use fruit instead. Dates are a magical fruit and we use them to make our oatmeal delicious and nutritious.
You can buy a pound of dates at Trader Joe’s any day of the week and you’ll need about 3-6 per person depending on how sweet their sweet tooth is! My kids have gotten used to dates and love to smash them into their oatmeal, but when they were young I would do it for them. My technique was to put a little oatmeal in the bowl and add the dates so I could almost blend them in with a spoon until pasty. Then I’d mix in the rest of the oatmeal. The dates would get soft and melty. Okay now I’m hungry.
- 3-6 dates per person
- Remove pit/seed
- Cut into pieces
- Smash into your oatmeal!
Alterna-tips:
- If we have some berries and walnuts lying around I will put those out as toppings too. My kids love to “create their own” whatever it is so little bowls of berries and nuts are always a hit.
- If they won’t do the dates you can always use coconut or date sugar. I try as often as possible to use whole fruits, but sometimes it just doesn’t work out. Date and coconut sugar are more similar in flavor to brown processed sugar.
Healthy food, happy family-
Jen
Please let me know how this hack worked for you and if you think someone else would love it, please share the blog.