an odd question but mildly Davis Sq related, I swear

[countlibras.livejournal.com]

I posted this question on cooking in a more generalized way, but I figured that it wouldn't hurt to post it here.



Does anyone have a recipe that comes close to replicating the oatmeal that is served at Johnny D's?

Comments

[heliopsis.livejournal.com]

I suspect you need to start with steel-cut oats.

I cook mine as follows:
1/3 c steel-cut oats in a tall saucepan. Turn the burner on high, and swirl the oats around in the pan until you get a nice, nutty aroma off them.
Add 4/3 cup water. Bring to a boil, turn off the heat and leave, covered, overnight.
In the morning, give it a stir to break it up, and throw in a handful of raisins. Dried tart cherries are also good. Turn on the heat to medium and get it steaming again. It will grow more fluid as it warms up; if it stays too stiff, add a little more water. Let it simmer and gurgle for five minutes or so. I don't know how long, really; as long as it takes me to brush my hair, get the newspaper in, finish brewing the coffee... You can add a little salt now, if you like; I don't usually.

Scoop it into your bowl, and add brown sugar, milk, cream, whatever you like.

The result is not quite as creamy as Johnny D's, but it has great texture and flavor. I bet if you cooked it a little longer, maybe added some more water and simmered for a while, you'd get a creamier texture. If you had a slow cooker, you could leave it simmering all night.

[badseed1980.livejournal.com]

Alton Brown also suggests using part water and part buttermilk to cook the steel-cut oats in, which would make it creamier too.

[laynamarya.livejournal.com]

All you really need is water, regular oats (they don't use steel-cut), raisins, and a little brown sugar.

The key is "steeping" the oats and raisins in boiling water for a very long time. I think a home batch would take about 20 minutes.

[countlibras.livejournal.com]

do you mean boil the oats for 20 minutes? Or literally steeping like with tea? So, I guess, boiling and then turning it off and letting sit for 20 minutes?

[laynamarya.livejournal.com]

Literally steeping them, like tea. I'm not sure why, but this causes the oats to expand better than boiling them on the stove. Maybe you could actually boil them for a few minutes, but the majority of the time, they should just be sitting and absorbing water. Keep them covered while they're steeping, though, because they'll still need to be pretty hot.

[heliopsis.livejournal.com]

Cool! Thanks. This makes sense, boiling tends to break up the flakes, which leaves you with a gummy mess; whereas steeping would let the flakes absorb water slowly so they puff up.

[artic-monkeys.livejournal.com]

Milk and Buttermilk are also used to marinate a lot of meats to remove the gamey flavor. I suspect that it realy does the same for oatmeal, and makes it smooth kind of like cream of wheat...