Cooking in Your Sleep
Four brand new, super-flavorful overnight oatmeal recipes you can serve cold or hot.
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We try to be thoughtful about how we make money, and so we only partner with brands and organizations that we know well and believe in. Bob’s Red Mill is one of those brands, and we’re glad to have organic reasons to promote them. This month’s post in partnership with Bob’s builds on Kate’s story about learning how to cook oatmeal (the right way!) from her dad.
When you love the process of cooking oatmeal as much as we obviously do, the leap to overnight oats is daunting. “Soaking breakfast in the fridge while you sleep is called marinating, not cooking,” we huffed.
Then the sunlight flicked on in our brains. The hidden appeal of overnight oats is that you can eat them cold—or hot. Soaking is actually pre-cooking, an easy way to transform cold cereal into a satisfying, portable, and creative concoction that sets your day up to unfold exactly the way you want.
Hyperbole? Let’s unpack—or un-jar, as true oaties might say—overnight oats, first from a texture perspective. The oats absorb enough liquid to pleasantly soften and absorb flavor during about eight hours in the fridge. At that point they are saturated and don’t really start breaking apart until closer to 24 hours, leaving you a big window to bring them wherever you’re going and decide whether you feel like nuking them when you get there.
Like a standard bowl of oatmeal, overnight oats can go sweet or savory. The recipes here give you both options. And they’re easy to assemble and tuck away while you’re preparing dinner the night before, or wrapping up the dishes and storing leftovers.
As for the choice of oats: We tried Bob’s Red Mill steel-cut, old-fashioned rolled, quick-cooking (not “instant” but thinly rolled to soften fast), and Gluten-Free Protein Oats (a special variety that has naturally more protein and hearty texture with a slightly nutty taste). Steel-cut are best cooked, IOHO; old-fashioned got super-soft (if that’s your thing); and quick-cooking delivered the creamiest, most porridge-like texture. But protein oats, with their pleasant heft and chew, proved the most versatile combining for sweet or savory accompaniments, and eating cold or hot.
The single-serve recipes here all include directions for making substitutions and heating in the microwave. So if you have any concerns about eating uncooked oats, that’s the delicious solution. (Overnight oats carry a caveat that some people might have gastric distress, and though the possibility of foodborne illness is lowered because oats are steamed before rolling, we’d be remiss not to mention it.) You can also multiply the recipe to increase the number of servings, but they’re best eaten before 16 hours in the fridge.
Is it bedtime yet? We can’t wait to wake up for breakfast.
Orange-Chile Overnight Oats
Sweet heat with a good-morning pick-me-up of flavors: red chiles, raw sugar, vegan yogurt, nuts, and fresh fruit. You can use fresh chiles instead of dried or liquid sweetener for coarse sugar; try peanuts or cashews instead of pistachios; or use dairy yogurt. And instead of the juicy orange, you can substitute 1/2 cup chopped fresh mango, pineapple, papaya, or melon.
What’s the difference between protein, steel-cut, and rolled oats? Mark explains.
PBJ&C Overnight Oats
Give overnight oats a chocolatey peanut butter vibe and they appeal as a mildly decadent breakfast or after-school snack. All you do differently is pop the jar in the fridge in the morning instead of the night before.
Blueberry Pancake Overnight Oats
Flashback to a leisurely Sunday brunch any morning of the week with a cup of oats that eats like a short stack, complete with blueberries, vanilla, and maple syrup.
Salsa-Spiked Overnight Oats with Taco Toppings
Turn up the heat on savory oatmeal with a bright and tangy overnight soaking liquid. You heard that right: we’re talking salsa, which is a pleasant surprise, even to us. This combo is particularly good nuked in the morning with a smattering of bubbling cheese—or opt for hard-boiled egg—before garnishing.