Maggie Monday: Overnight Oatmeal

I have cooked over  a hundred meals in a slow cooker in my life and only once has it been used to cook overnight. It is truly a device that has been underused when it is dark out. With Maggie’s recipe below I may start to rectify that. With today being tax day, an economical meal like oatmeal hits the wallet just right. Take a look…

We love oatmeal at our house, but I don’t make it often. It just takes awhile, has to be closely watched, stirred, and makes a bit of a mess of my saucepan. I just don’t bother. Then, I ran across this recipe on the Eating Well website and it was an epiphany! Of course! The crock pot! It had to work.

So, I added cinnamon and vanilla to the recipe (it just was too bland as posted), and I opted to add the cranberries after it was cooked to individual servings. I don’t like them when they are globby and soggy.

This was great. You MUST use steel cut oats. They have to be a hardy oat. The quick oats and even rolled oats won’t stand up to the hours of cooking. However, the steel cut oats are perfect for this. Trader Joe’s carries them.

I made these on a Thursday night, and we had a great Friday breakfast, then on Saturday I mixed up some eggs, milk, brown sugar and baking powder into the left overs, popped it in a baking dish and we had Baked Oatmeal. A Two-fer on this one!

Overnight Oatmeal

What you need:

8 cups water

2 cups steel cut oats

2/3 cup dried cranberries (reserved)

½ tsp vanilla, (reserved)

1 tsp cinnamon

¼ tsp salt or to taste

What you do:

Combine water oats, cinnamon and salt in a 5-6 quart slow cooker. Turn heat to low and cook until the oats are tender and creamy- about 7-8 hours. You can do this before you go to bed, and it will be done in the morning.

Spoon into bowls and serve with cranberries, raisins, walnuts, brown sugar, and milk, as desired.