Overnight Slow Food Barley Porridge

I wrote about barley porridge in the oven on the blog before. I've now tried a new way of making the same thing. Even easier. You just put the porridge in the oven overnight. In the morning you wake up to the smell of delicious barley, just take out a bowl and breakfast is served.

Overnight barley porridge serves 4

2 dl whole barley grains (preferably wholegrain)
1,1 L milk
1 1/2 tsp salt
a couple knobs of butter

Heat the oven to 100°C. Put all the ingredients in an ovensafe dish. Leave the porridge in the oven overnight (8 hours). Eat with a little cinnamon and sugar and some milk. Or with fresh berries, yum.

Slow and lazy

If you fancy something delicious but you really don't want to work for it, go for barley porridge made in the oven. The only thing you need is time.

Ok, you also need 2 dl of whole barley grains, 1,5 litres of milk and 1 tsp of salt. You can also throw in a knob of butter, if you want. And you need an oven dish with high edges.

This is what you do: Preheat the oven to 150°. Butter your oven dish. Put the ingredients in the dish and put it in the oven, on the lowest level. Take it out 3 hrs later and let it sit for a while. Eat with some fresh berries or throw some frozen ones in a blender..

So good! And very different from the stove top barley porridge I wrote about a while ago. Not creamy and thick, but with a really nice roasted flavour.
 

When I told my dad that I had made this kind of porridge, he got nostalgic and told me his grandmother used to make it when he was little. He also recommended that you fry any leftover porridge in butter the next day and you'll get a nice treat.

Fridge porridge!

Sounds crazy, maybe even weird. But really it's just a really smart idea: instead of just soaking some oats, you soak the whole recipe and just heat it up (or don't) in the morning. I found this idea on a great blog called The Oatmeal Artist. This girl is  p a s s i o n a t e  about oatmeal. She makes it in classic and wacky combinations, hot and cold, and takes stunningly beautiful pictures of her creations.

During the last couple of weeks I've tried a bunch of her fridge recipes (because that was such a great idea, I'm still going to try her regular ones too). I especially liked the Banana Cream Pie and the Lemon Drop. The first one I cooked on the stove for about 5 min and the other one I had cold. I recommend letting it stand for just a bit though, even if you're eating it cold, because at least for me it was a bit too well chilled to have straight out of the fridge.

Here's a copy of The Oatmeal Artists Banana Cream Pie Overnight Oatmeal:

"Ingredients (serves 1)

1/2 cup regular rolled oats

1/2 cup milk of choice

1 tsp chia seeds

1 overripe banana

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1/4 cup plain or vanilla yogurt, such as SoDelicious (optional)

pinch of salt

Add the first three ingredients to a mason jar.

Mash up 2/3 of your banana and add to the jar. Slice the remaining 1/3 into the jar.

Add vanilla extract, optional yogurt, and salt. Put the cover tightly on the jar and shake, shake, shake.

Place in the fridge overnight. In the morning, you will have a delicious, dessert-like oatmeal ready and waiting for you!"

Now, whenever I find an exciting new recipe, two things play a big part in whether it'll become a favourite:

1. Can it be tweaked according to whatever ingredients I happen to have at home?
2. Is it EITHER so easy to remember OR so forgiving that I don't always have to look the recipe up?

For these recipes, the answer to both is yes. Yesterday I threw together a fridge porridge in a small container and it went pretty much like this:

some oats

some organic shredded coconut

two dried dates, chopped up small

sprinkling of a mix of chia, buckwheat and hemp cereal*

a pinch of salt

--> mix it all together, put in fridge overnight

in the morning, just warm it up in a pan and sprinkle som apple and basil on top (if you, like me, think that basil goes with everything), add milk if you feel like it

I call it The Coconut Date Throw-Together Overnight Oatmeal

The result was great. This type of recipe is definitely staying in my repertiore. Check out The Oatmeal Artist for lots of great recipes and ideas.

*yep, well, Vancouver is like the yoga capital of Canada so things like this make their way into your home almost on their own.

Why such slow recipes?

As you might have noticed many of our recipes take quite long to make. All our recipes can be made with quick oats, crushed or pearl barley or rice flakes instead of rice, depending on how much time you have to spare and what you want to get out of the porridge. The reason we tend to use the wholegrain versions is simple: 

whole grains taste better, get creamier when cooked and are more nutritious. 

The more you process the grain, the more you loose of the most nutritious parts of the grain.
The processed grains have a higher starch content as compared to other nutrients, which is part of why they've become such a no-no for a lot of carb-conscious people. Real whole grains have a rich amount of vitamins, minerals and dietary fibre, as well as protein and fats. Also, the complex structure of the carbs in unprocessed grains make them slow for the body to take up. This means that instead of the quick peak in blood sugar you get from sweets and highly processed foods, you get a more modest blood sugar rise that is easier for the body to handle. If you cook your porridge using milk the end product has a surprisingly high protein content, and if you're still not sure, go ahead and throw in some nuts and seeds or, as my body-building friend does, mix in some cottage cheese after the cooking is done.

Heres a comparison of a bunch of different whole grains and their nutritional contents from the Whole Grains Council. Looking forward to blogging about lots of these grains in the future! Linn-Sofie is just finising up a delicious barley oven porridge recipe, should be up here shortly.