Warm cereal for cold mornings

I love to breakfast on steel-cut oats and long cooking multi-grain hot cereals on cool mornings. But they have a long cooking time and are not convenient when everyone is trying to get out the door on an early schedule.

This technique will solve the time-crunch problem on busy fall and winter mornings.  My friends Cindy from my knitting group and Becky from Vintage Mixer both use a similar method to make oatmeal.  I adapted the short cut instructions on the back of the McCann's Steel Cut Oats can.

Here's what you do:

The night before you want to serve the oats:

Measure out 1 cup of water and bring it to a boil.  I like to add a pinch of salt to the boiling water.  Add 1/4 cup of cereal and stir in. Let the cereal cook for 4-5 minutes.  I like my oatmeal creamy so I simmered mine for 7 minutes. Take the pan off the heat and refrigerate the mixture overnight. In the morning,  remove the oatmeal and either heat it in the same pot or heat it in the microwave.   This makes one generous individual serving.  I make two servings for B and I.

We  put the oatmeal in our bowls, sprinkled some brown sugar, spooned on some applesauce and a few chopped roasted pecans and then topped it with a dollop of cream.  We were inspired by Das Cafe's 5 grain oatmeal.   You could cook the cereal with milk or almond milk instead of water, and serve it with fresh fruit. Add some honey or agave... whatever you like.

This is so good and easy on a busy morning.
Try it and experiment with your own version.  You can't go wrong.