Baked Oatmeal, Pot Version
Brown sugar oats with cranberries and walnuts, cooked in one pot instead of an hour in an oven.
- calories
- 690
- weight
- 5 oz
- cal / oz
- 138
- protein
- 15 g
- serves
- 1, scales
- prep
- 2 min
- cook
- 7 min
- total time
- 9 min
- water
- 300 ml boiled
- cost
- $
Calorie and protein figures are my own estimates, good enough for planning a food bag and not meant as precise nutrition data.
- Breakfast
- Canister stove
- Alcohol / Esbit
- Campfire coals
- Backpacking
- Car camping
- Basecamp
- Winter / snow
- Vegetarian
- One pot
- Pre-mix at home
- Shelf stable
- Dump and stir
Ingredients
| Rolled oats | 3/4 cup | quick oats work, steel cut will not |
|---|---|---|
| Powdered whole milk | 3 tbsp | stands in for the fresh milk |
| Brown sugar | 2 tbsp | or less, it is sweet |
| Ground cinnamon | 1/2 tsp | |
| Baking powder | 1/4 tsp | optional, gives it a little lift |
| Salt | 1/4 tsp | |
| Dried cranberries | 1/4 cup | |
| Chopped walnuts | 1/4 cup | |
| Butter or ghee | 1 tbsp | ghee keeps warm, butter is fine for a few days |
| Vanilla extract | 1/4 tsp | in a dropper bottle, or skip it |
Method
- Boil 300 ml of water. Pull the pot off the heat.
- Dump in the dry bag, cranberries and walnuts included, and stir until there are no dry pockets.
- Put it back on the lowest flame for two or three minutes, stirring, until it thickens and starts to pull away from the pot.
- Kill the heat, stir in the butter and vanilla, and lid it for three minutes.
- Eat straight from the pot. It stiffens as it cools, so hot water loosens it back up.
Baked oatmeal is a casserole dish that spends an hour in an oven. Everything that makes it worth eating survives the move to a pot: oats, fat, sugar, and a lot of dried fruit and nuts, cooked past the point of porridge until it holds a shape on the spoon. The oven is doing texture work, not flavor work, and a low flame with steady stirring gets you close enough.
Milk powder replaces the half cup of fresh milk and does it better on trail, since it carries fat and protein without weight or a cooler. Eggs are the only real loss. A quarter teaspoon of baking powder makes up a little of the body they gave it. The walnuts matter more than they look like they should: they are most of the fat and most of the reason this holds you until lunch.
Packing
Oats, milk powder, sugar, cinnamon, baking powder, and salt premixed in one bag. Cranberries and walnuts in the same bag. Butter travels in a small screw-top jar, or use ghee in warm weather.
Variations
- Swap the cranberries for chopped dried apple and add a pinch of nutmeg.
- A scoop of whey or unflavored protein powder stirred in off the heat pushes it past 25 g of protein.
- Leave out the walnuts and butter, use powdered coconut milk, and it is a vegan, nut-free breakfast.
https://morefood.org/making-spirits-and-budgets-bright-with-feasts-breakfast