Crock Pot Steel Cut Oatmeal

This is a recipe I thought I would NEVER post on here. Why? Well, because I tried this method several times for Overnight Oatmeal and every time we barely made it through breakfast. In fact, once we ended up eating cereal because the oatmeal was just SO NASTY. Gag attack. It was like glue. You couldn’t fling that stuff off your spoon if you wanted – sorta like trying to get dried boogers off the wall – but, I digress.

I even had a conversation with The Poorganic Life about how we both thought that Overnight Oatmeal was one of the most disgusting dishes ever invented. EVER.

Not only was it completely nasty, but cleaning the crock after breakfast would make a grown man cry for his mommy. Yes, you could use a liner…but I use my crock pot so often that it would be silly for me to invest in liners – I’d have to quit buying toilet paper to afford them.

But then, my friends, I found a different way for cooking oats in the crock pot. It involves using a water bath instead of cooking the oats directly in the crock pot. I found the idea over at Mommy’s Kitchen and I decided to try it for myself using the ingredients I wanted to use.

I found a bowl that fit down inside my largest crock – a 6 quart. The bowl was a 6 cup bowl and it worked perfectly. A little of the liquid dribbled over the side, and you can see that down in the water – but it was a miniscule amount, so I will use this same bowl next time.

You’ll fill the crock with water to about ¾ the way up the side of your nested bowl. Then you put the lid on, walk away, and your breakfast will be ready in 8 hours. Nice!

Please make sure to use steel cut oats for this recipe. Any other type of oat will result in more glue-like oatmeal. And only Willy Olsen likes eating glue.

We like Bob’s Red Mill oats, but I also buy steel cut oats in bulk at a local store. Steel cut oats are whole grain oat groats which have been cut into pieces.

We really enjoyed this for breakfast. I put it in to cook at 10:50pm (I still can’t believe I was up that late…oh wait, I have kids – that’s why) and it was ready at 6:50 in the morning.

But guess what? We weren’t ready to eat. Actually, I was the only one awake at 6:50 on Sunday morning – I like getting up early when I am able. So, I turned the crock OFF and left the oats in there for another hour until we ate.

I served each bowl with individual toppings instead of stirring them in.  We each like different stuff on top – Barry likes walnuts and pecans on his oatmeal, and he used honey. I like peanut butter instead of nuts and I use maple syrup to sweeten.

The texture of this oatmeal is more like traditional cooked old fashioned oats on the stovetop. I normally like the bite of steel cut oats, but I did like this dish even though there wasn’t any “bite” left after 8 hours.