November 21, 2020 - 2:23pm
Cut Oats for Morning Oatmeal
I've purchased a KoMo Classic home mill which I am very pleased with for doing flour and was wondering if it is something I can use to cut/crack oats with?
Generally the night before, I add some Quaker brand steel cut oats, water, milk, brown sugar, etc. to my small crock pot and and set it to warm to heat during the night so that I have my hot oatmeal for my morning breakfast.
My question then is if I purchase some clean hulled oats, can I run them through my Classic mill on coarse grind to get the equivalent of the Quaker brand steel cut oats? Does Quaker do anything special to the process of their steel cut oats that I would be unable to duplicate at home with my mill that you're aware of?
Thank you
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Porridge oats are steamed then rolled and cut. It's not the same as buying oat groats and putting them through a mill. In other words porridge oats are not raw. They've gone through a process which might produce different results than just cracking oat groats and cooking them. Might still be edible and tasty but will probably differ somewhat.
It's a different consistency (more fines and more irregular pieces) than steel-cut but should still work well for your porridge. In this linked picture, you'll probably settle on something that looks like one of the two center pictures in the bottom row. The left-center material is coarse rye meal; the right-center material is medium rye meal. They are fairly typical of what your mill can produce.
You'll probably have to do a little fiddling with the settings to find one that produces the texture you prefer. A few minutes of experimentation should tell you what you need to know.
Paul
Yes Paul, the two center bottom pictures probably resemble the steel cut oats bought from the store which is what I'd shoot for. Now in regards to Abe's comment about the oats being steamed, rolled and then cut might be a deal stopper. Perhaps we could wait and see if some oat porridge lovers chime in and give an over view of their processes and how great a difference in texture and taste there is between the commercial and home processes. I do have a flaker, but from what I've read the old fashion oatmeal (flake type) tends to turn to a mush when cooked over night. Where as the steel cut oats tend to have more texture after prolonged cooking. As for personal preference, I'd have to say that in growing up, I was always given the old fashioned mush oatmeal on those cold winter mornings before heading out to school. So I guess I'd say six of one and a half dozen of the other. I was just hoping I had found another use for my mill other than producing flour only.
I have both Komo flaker and mill. Tried to mill groats to try and get steel cut “like” oats but I personally didn’t like texture. I just eat the whole groat or flake on corse setting. I make mine in advance to use during week and just reheat in microwave come out great. I use my instant pot. 1 cup oats either whole or flaked. I roast the oats on sauté setting in Tbs butter for about 5 min. 3 1/2 cups water. Pinch of salt. 3 min for flaked oats or 15min for whole groats on high pressure. When done they will look a little watery but just stir and they come out fine. Reheat in morning for about 1.5 min. You can adjust water and time to suit what consistency you like
Oat groats (hulled oats) intended for human consumption must be heat treated with steam or kilned to deactivate the lipase enzymes. Otherwise the high oil content of oats would become rancid.
So-called hulless (naked) oats thresh freely and need not be heat treated. (They can also be planted.) They have a different flavor.
The groats may be cooked as-is, rolled (flaked), cut, or ground.
Cut oats are made by forcing the groat through a screen where they are cut with a blade at a right angle before it exits. Groats broken during processing are also included. There is no household apparatus that will make cut oats. Cut oats take somewhat less time to cook than grouts, but the texture is similar.
With home mills you can make coarsely ground (scottish) oats. They have more texture than rolled oats, but take somewhat longer to cook.
Groats are much more tender that wheat. Whether flaking or coarsely grinding, flour will be generated. I recommend separating the flour with a sieve. Cooking the coarse material will give a less mushy product, and you will have oat flour for other uses.
The high price of steel cut oats lead me to explore my Scottish heritage. Now I'm a big fan of stone milled, Scottish oats. First I pan toast a cup of oat groats until they're fragrant and just slightly darkened. Still warm I run through my Mockmill on a very coarse grind. The next morning they are slowly stirred into a boiling pot of water that's 3 times the volume of the oats after milling. They need 15-20 minutes of stirring and careful attention but it's cheaper to pay attention than pay money (my Highland heritage revealed). If you've got the groats and the mill give it a shot. I did, and if I won the lottery tomorrow I'd still do it this way.
Charbono et al,
Thank you for all the insight on making oat porridge. I’ve come to the opinion buy way of all your comments is that to coarse grind hulled oats only produces a mediocre porridge ingredient at best. Charbono’s comment of “Oat groats (hulled oats) intended for human consumption must be heat treated with steam or kilned to deactivate the lipase enzymes” points to a labor intensive effort that probably can’t be justified especially when one can go to the store and purchase steel cut oats for a very small sum.
Now another thought comes to mind in regards to Charbono’s comment in regards to heat treated with steam or kilned. It seems there are numerous YouTube videos showing how to use a flaker to roll oats of porridge. Soaking the hulled oats in water overnight and then running them through the flaker. Drying the resulting flakes in a dehydrator or on parchment paper in the oven for later use. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLCNwbvV8fw
Perhaps I was barking up the wrong tree in regards to milling oats for porridge and should turn my attention more towards the use of flaked rolled oats for my oat porridge?
The groats you buy will have already been heat treated. For example, Honeyville and Heartland state that their groats are "heat stabilized".
Of all the ways to prepare oats, my favorite is coarsely ground. I like the texture, and it doesn't take too long to cook. Rolling your own is too much trouble. Buying rolled oats is the simplest way to go, and there is virtually no chance of a rock.