By soaking the oatmeal overnight with a dash of lemon juice, not only are you reducing anti-nutrients, but your oatmeal will cook up in minutes in the morning. A true instant oatmeal, done the old fashioned way! We finally found a way to make soaked oatmeal that we can really enjoy by the use of lemon juice, which gives a much more mild taste. We also love to add chia seeds to our oatmeal (easily soaked overnight with the oats). This adds not only omega 3’s, protein and nutrition to our oatmeal, but we love the texture it gives.
When I decided to start soaking grains, I quickly decided soaked oatmeal was just not going to happen. It was so sour my husband wouldn’t even eat it. Of course, this was in my dairy days and I was trying to use yogurt and buttermilk. Now that we are dairy free, I decided to give it another go. I tried raw apple cider vinegar at first just because I had it on hand. And, not surprisingly, it had a funny vinegar taste to it. Then, I tried lemon juice. And it worked! It was hardly sour at all! By the time you add ghee (or butter) and some honey and raisins to the bowl, it tastes like a normal bowl of oatmeal.
A quick review, the acidic addition that you can add to your soaked grain include:
Dairy: Buttermilk, yogurt, whey, kefir
Non-Dairy: Lemon juice, vinegar (I also think that a well soured coconut kefir, or even water kefir would could work as well, but I haven’t tried it yet).
I have also added in some spelt or whole wheat flour into my oatmeal. Near the beginning of this blog I recommended Rebuild From Depression’s helpful Phytic Acid E-course. One of the tips she includes is adding a grain high in the phytase enzyme (which neutralizes the anti-nutrient phytic acid) to grains low in phytase-such as corn and oatmeal. She suggests adding in 10 percent whole wheat (or spelt) to your oatmeal. I’ve been experimenting a little, and so far we like having a tablespoon per cup of oatmeal, which isn’t quite 10 percent. Feel free to experiment on your own and see what you like.
Because I couldn’t get soaked oatmeal to taste right for a while, we had taken it completely out of our diet, but now that we are having it again, it’s certainly helping with our food budget! I was able to get a large bag full of organic rolled oats for about four dollars. That four dollars will stretch into many meals for us.
So this will be my nourishing frugal recipe for the carnival which I will be posting late tonight/ early tomorrow morning. I just ordered five pounds of steel cut oats and am eager to try a soaked version of them as well.
Basic Soaked Oatmeal-Serves 4 people
If you are worried about it being too sour, start with one tablespoon of lemon juice. If the chai seeds appearance is not to your liking, you can always grind them in your clean spice/coffee grinder. Lindsay from Passionate Homemaking gave me the idea to use a mason jar for the soaking process.
2 cups of rolled oats (not quick cooking)
2 cups of water
1 tablespoon chia seeds (or flax seeds )
2 tablespoons of fresh lemon juice
2-4 tablespoons of wheat or spelt flour
2 cups of water
a dash or two of sea salt1-12 to 24 hours before hand, place your oats, chai seeds, wheat flour and 2 cups of water in a quart size mason jar or bowl. Mix it all together and cover. If you need to, you can add a bit more water to cover.
2-The next morning, dump into a pot with 2 more cups of water and a dash of salt. Bring to a simmer and cook just a few minutes and it’s done!
3-Serve with your favorite toppings: Honey, maple syrup, butter, palm sugar, ghee, raisins, dried fruit, fruit compotes, nuts, etc. Get creative! We have found that if we put a little ghee and honey on our oatmeal, it gives it an almost caramel like taste. Yummy!
How do you like your oatmeal?
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I have not read the other comments so I’m not sure if someone said this already or not…but when you described the steps of making the oatmeal you did not say when/where you add the lemon juice. It is obvious that you put it in during the soaking step, but it is not listed along with the other ingredients there. Just thought you’d like to know! Anyways, I’m excited to try this recipe this weekend! Thanks!
I am new to this way of eating, and just tried your soaked oatmeal. It turned out very well! It was not sour, the texture was creamy, and I added some natural peanut butter (for protein) and honey to mine and it was about the best bowl of oatmeal I’ve ever had! (I’m not a huge fan of oatmeal, but I know it is cheap and nourishing, so I’m trying!)
What am supposed to do with the lemon juice, drink it before I go to bed? lol
I HOPE you can answer a question for me, because I can’t seem to get an answer anywhere….
If I use acid water (opposite of alkaline from the machine), do I still need to add lemon?? The water pH would be 5.5.
Thanks!!
Annabeth,
The point being to have acidic water to soak in, I think you should be just fine using acidic water from your machine without lemon juice.
Hi,
I soak 500g of oats by covering it with water and the juice of a whole lemon, then the next day grate in two granny smiths, add a 1kg tub of yoghurt and some big spoons of honey, a bit of cinammon. then i cover it in raspberries and blueberries and leave it overnight. amazing.
Hi! I wanted to let you know that I used raw apple cider vinegar in my oatmeal, because that was all I had on hand. When I was cooking my oatmeal this morning, I cooked it with some raisins and cinnamon. Instead of a vinegary taste, I ended up with a delicious apple taste in the oatmeal. I don’t think it’s sour at all, although I could smell the vinegar when I dumped it out of the canning jar. So yummy! This is my favorite recipe! I can’t wait to share it with my mom, who loves oatmeal even more than me.
Thanks for the tip on using lemon juice! I tried my very first batch of soaked oatmeal last night and we used buttermilk. Ick! It was so sour we couldn’t eat it. So, I am excited to hear you had success with the lemon juice. I’ll have to try that tonight.
I love oatmeal and I like it to be creamy and soft – no hard bits of the oats for me. I am pleased that the soaked oatmeal gave me the correct consistency, now I just need to work on the flavor
I just need to find some pumpkin and I can make a fabulous pumpkin nut spice oatmeal that even my non-oatmeal-eating kids will eat!
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