Old-fashioned oats can be used in baked goods, meatloaf, stuffing, and granola. They have a subtle flavor that works well with sweet or savory toppings. Oats can also be boiled to make porridge and used in desserts like apple crisps and oatmeal cookies.
With old-fashioned oats, you can do so much more than just hot or cold breakfast cereal. The wholesome or steel-cut variety of oats can be used in many different types of baked goods, as well as meatloaf and stuffing recipes. Because oats have only a subtle garnet and nutty flavor, they work well with any topping from sweet to savory.
When used in meatloaf, oats “knead” the mixture much like adding breadcrumbs. Old-fashioned oats take on the flavor of whatever seasonings and spices are used in the meatloaf. We recommend using half oats and half breadcrumbs when making meatloaf. In the added oat filling, sweet and savory flavors can be used, such as when combining chopped onions with fruits such as apricots. Some cooks like to lightly brown the oats first with butter or oil in a skillet before mixing them into a poultry stuffing recipe along with bread cubes.
Whenever you want to make a sweet, flaky crust, batter, or topping with a satisfying texture, oats can be a great center ingredient. Popular desserts you can make with old-fashioned oats include apple crisps, date squares, and oatmeal cookies. The apple and date squares have a bottom crust of oats and topping. Apple filling is usually quite chunky, while date filling is a thick paste. Oatmeal cookies are the simplest of the three desserts, as there is neither a filling nor a crust, just regular cookie dough with raisins, nuts, or both added with the oats.
You can also make quick breads, coffee cakes, scones and muffins with oats in the batter, as a topping, or both. A crunchy oatmeal topping made with melted butter, brown sugar, and maybe a little cinnamon adds extra crunch and flavor to the tops of many different types of baked goods. Using old-fashioned oats in the batter can help give baked goods a nice, rough texture. Oats can also be used on their own and boiled for a few minutes in water to create the thick, warming cereal called porridge. You may want to sweeten the porridge with brown sugar, cinnamon and sliced apples before serving it with cold milk.
Granola is a popular cold breakfast cereal that you can make with oats and your choice of nuts, seeds and/or dried fruit. It’s best done in a batch that you’ll use up fairly quickly since it won’t have any preservatives. Simply mix together old-fashioned oats with nuts, seeds, or dried fruit plus salt, brown sugar or honey, cinnamon, and vanilla before spreading the mixture into a baking pan to cook. The result is a crunchy cereal ready to eat cold with milk. Granola can also be sprinkled on yogurt for snacking or you can use it to make granola bars.
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