Monday, January 24, 2011

Groats

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During my days as an enterprise content management consultant, I would sometimes come across documents with interesting subject matter.  Two such topics that I’ll forever remember were Waffle Damage and Groats Versus Oats, mostly due to the absurdness I found in those titles and because at the time I didn’t know that groats were an actual thing.  In fact, there’s such a thing as groaty dick.  This hilarious revelation only helped fuel my need to cook up some groats.

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Since groats are essentially uncut steel-cut oats, I treated them as such during the cooking process but simply let them simmer a little longer than normal.  The final product tasted pretty much like steel-cut oats but with more texture, so to mix things up a bit I added some dried blackcurrants and pandan (which is becoming an ingredient that I’m increasingly trying to incorporate into things.)

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Overall, the groats were a somewhat sterile departure from a typical bowl of steel-cut oats given the fact that one is simply a chopped up version of the other.  Also, to be quite honest, I was really looking forward to the groats blowing me away considering there was a presentation dedicated to comparing them.  But perhaps that was the conclusion of the presentation: there really isn’t that much difference between groats and steel-cut oats when preparing them in a porridge.

Groats

  1. 2 C milk + 2 C water => simmer
  2. 1 T butter + saucepan/skillet => melt, medium heat
  3. 1 C groats + step #2 => toast, stir, ~2 minutes
  4. Step #3 + step #1 => simmer, don’t stir, ~10 minutes
  5. 1/4 t salt + step #4 => stir with wooden spoon handle occasionally, ~10 minutes

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