Fermented oatmeal is a delicious and traditional breakfast. It’s as quick as instant oatmeal, but far cheaper and healthier than store-bought instant oatmeal packets. Stir in some nutritious and probiotic toppings to really kick-start your day!
Why Ferment oatmeal?
Pre-soaking and fermenting grains before cooking is a traditional way of preparing them. Some of the benefits include:
- Reduced cooking time – rolled oats will cook in the same amount of time as quick oats
- Improved digestion – complex carbs are broken down before cooking.
- Healthier – breaking down phytic acid increases the absorption of nutrients.
- Flavour development – fermented oatmeal has a delicious sourdough flavour.
Probiotic Toppings For Oatmeal
It’s easy to add delicious and nutritious flavours to your oatmeal. Stir in flax, chia seeds, hemp hearts or walnuts. Add fresh berries, chopped apple or raisins. Cook your oatmeal with pumpkin pie spice, chai spice or straight cinnamon. However, for a delicious probiotic oatmeal, top it with a dose of probiotics. Here are a few delicious suggestions:
- Cultured Dairy: Yogurt or buttermilk are perfect for oatmeal. I don’t recommend pouring milk kefir into hot bowl of porridge because it tends to curdle.
- Cultured Coconut Milk: Thick and creamy coconut milk yogurt is delicious with sliced banana, kiwi and pineapple.
- Fermented Fruit Sauce: Try a spoonful of fermented apple sauce or berry sauce with a sprinkling of hemp hearts and cinnamon.
- Caramel Sauce: If you’re a sweet tooth, switch up your usual sweet toppings for a probiotic date caramel sauce.
- Naturally Sweet Condiments: Instead of jam, try a naturally sweet fermented condiment, like apple chutney, mostarda or cranberry sauce.
Fermented Oatmeal
Does breakfast leave you feeling sluggish and full? Try making soaked and fermented oatmeal for a quick and easy breakfast. It’s the perfect way to start your day!
- Prep Time: 2 minutes
- Cook Time: 10 minutes
- Total Time: 12 minutes
- Yield: 2 servings 1x
- Category: Breakfast
- Method: Fermented
- Cuisine: Traditional
Ingredients
- 1 cup rolled oats
- 2 tbsp culture (see notes)
- 1 cup water (chlorine free for soaking)
- 1 cup of water for cooking
Instructions
- Mix the oats with the culture and 1 cup of water in a glass container.
- Cover with a tea towel and leave to ferment in a warm location overnight or for up to 2 days.
- To cook, boil 1 cup of water and mix into the oats. If it’s not warm enough you can cook the oats for a few minutes in the microwave or on the stove top.
Notes
- Usually, I make fermented oatmeal with milk kefir. You could also use other dairy cultures like buttermilk and yogurt.
- For vegan oatmeal, culture with vegan yogurt or kombucha.
- The kitchen counter is fine for soaked oatmeal. However, if you want a strong sourdough flavour, then stash your fermenting oats somewhere warm, like above your refrigerator, near a heater, or beside your hot water tank.
Keywords: soaked, prefermented, gluten free, vegan, wholesome, fall, winter
Emillie, does one have to use a starter culture? Will the oats ferment on their own without the inclusion of any culture?
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Oats will fermented without a starter (like sourdough), however it will probably take about 5 days. I usually set up my oatmeal the night before with a starter because I’m not that organized!
I put organic yogurt & the liquid with my oats & water overnight and eat them straight out of the jar (not cooking) is that okay? Especially in summer time, I’d rather not cook them. Is it more or less beneficial cooking or eating raw. I add blueberries, nuts, seeds and a little almond creamer to sweeten. Just wondering what you opinion is about eating them ‘raw’
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Fermenting the oats for raw eating is definitely better than just eating raw oats with milk (muesli style.) If it doesn’t bother you, then I don’t think you need to have it cooked, especially as having it raw will give you a good dose of probiotics.
There are vegan kefirs out there nowadays, too – for example GT’s makes a few different flavors of it, from coconut water.
I’ll have to look into those. I haven’t seen vegan kefir before (besides water kefir). Cheers!
Love the sound of this. Just wanted to check / I should be using kefir milk not the grains?
The grains only like to culture in milk. So use cultured milk kefir in this recipe. It has enough bacteria/yeast to culture the oatmeal. Yum!
Thank you for the quick reply. Can’t wait to try this 🙂
Is there any worry about this having alcohol in it? If eaten cold like overnight oats.
All yeast based ferments (kombucha, kefir, bread) make some alcohol. Yeast converts sugar into alcohol and CO2. However, unless you’re using high alcohol strains (specific for wine and beer) it won’t get above 0.5%.
If you are still concerned, soak your oats in yogurt, which is not a yeast based ferment. Enjoy!
My inquiry is similar to Haddie’s. I wonder if cooking the oats kills the probiotics. The benefit still remains that its removed the indigestible part. Maybe cooking them no higher than medium heat is better? I didn’t boil mine since they were sticking to the bottom and evaporating pretty quickly.
This is a cooked oatmeal, which means it’s not probiotic. However, eating soaked oats without cooking would be probiotic. I mostly fermenting then cook to improve the digestibility. To avoid killing the probiotics you could heat the oats to 40 C, 104 F. But that is really barely above room temperature. 🙂
You can create a sourdough oat starter just like any other sourdough starter. This is really quick and easy if you already have a sourdough starter: just mix a little of that with oats and water and proceed as usual. If you don’t have a sourdough starter, you can start to create one using any raw whole grain and then switch to rolled oats after a day or two. Rolled oats aren’t the best for the initial mix because they’re steamed in processing, which kills the organisms you need. To eat raw, you’ll want to have switched to rolled oats for several days before using. To eat cooked, you can actually just use your wheat/rye/whatever starter directly.
For this technique, overnight at moderate to cool room temperature works best.
Nice! I haven’t tried the “perpetually fermented oatmeal” method, because my family really prefers my fermented granola to oatmeal. But I love oatmeal and would love to try this out sometime. Thanks for sharing!