Experimental oatmeal creates stir in kitchen

Max+makes+a+delicious+oatmeal+breakfast+at+his+apartment%2C+Monday%2C+Feb.+3.

Max makes a delicious oatmeal breakfast at his apartment, Monday, Feb. 3.

Compared to the kaleidoscope of sugar frosted rainbows available in the breakfast aisle, oatmeal’s pale color and often gloppy texture and taste are difficult to get excited about.

Oatmeal doesn’t initially inspire the kind of devotion other cereals enjoy. However, beneath its mild-mannered appearance, oatmeal hides a variety of secret powers waiting to be unlocked.

The first thing most people associate with oatmeal is a small pre-flavored paper packet of instant mush. This is not oatmeal. It is a weak imposter designed by oatmeal’s enemies to defame the powerful foodstuff that was favored by admirable people like George Washington and the Scottish.

Although true oatmeal takes a bit longer to cook than instant style oatmeal, it lives up to its fame and packs a meal’s worth of texture and taste into one serving.

Some options, like steel-cut oats, are chewy and take about 20 minutes to cook. Rolled oats are flakier and take about 10 minutes.

Cooking good oatmeal is more complicated than pouring milk onto cereal. When the winds are howling and the snow is falling deep, eating a bowl of oatmeal will warm you from the inside.

To cook oatmeal correctly, figure out how to boil water and learn how to read time. Your easiest mistake is to forget about the oatmeal on the stove, leading to uninspiring results.

For the first attempt, follow the ratio of water to oats listed on the package. It is usually about two cups of water to one cup of oats with a dash of salt. If the result is too mushy or too dry, adjust the water amount accordingly.

Once you have successfully cooked oatmeal, you’ll discover how adaptable it is.

Some people complain about the plain taste of oatmeal, not realizing that oatmeal itself is like a canvas. It provides a nutritious and textured background that you can paint with many different flavors.

The most basic is brown sugar and raisins, but some of my favorite combinations are molasses and mangoes, tangerines and chocolate chips, or bacon and fried eggs.

While oatmeal is a common breakfast food, morning meals are only the beginning. Oatmeal can also be a hearty addition to lunch, dinner and dessert.

Leftover oatmeal can be stored in a container in the fridge for a week and warmed up for any meal.

 Fry leftover oatmeal in butter and mix it with sausage and grated cheese for a crunchy midday snack to rival the comforts of mac-and-cheese.

Oatmeal can be used to thicken soups and stews for dinner, or sprinkle some dry oatmeal over ice cream for an evening reward that will sustain you until morning.

As if oatmeal needed anything else to prove its superiority to other ‘breakfast foods,’ it can be used to make some truly delicious beer. Regional brews like Elysian’s Dragonstooth and Ninkasi’s Vanilla Oatis provide oatmeal stouts that use oats in the brewing process to make smooth, dark beers that will make you forget about certain ‘Irish’ beers that are actually brewed in Canada.

So whether you are drinking or munching your oats, at the break of dawn or under a full moon, enjoy the powerful secrets of this super powered grain.