Great ingredients make for great meals. Whenever you can, use the highest quality supplies for your recipes. The flavor difference will always come through in your finished dish.
If there is an ingredient that you are not familiar with, check our Ingredient section. There are pages and pages of information about the ingredients used in my recipes.
Ingredient Information
Oatmeal
What we call oatmeal is processed from one of the cereal grasses - oats. As with most cereals a fair amount of processing takes place before we pluck the familiar cardboard carton from the store shelves to cook up a bowl of steaming oatmeal.
Rolled oats, or old-fashioned oats, result from first cleaning, toasting and then hulling, and then a second cleaning. This initial product is known as oat groats (any grain up until this stage is considered a groat). It is only after being steamed and rolled flat that the product that we think of as oatmeal is made.
Quick cooking oats are actually rolled oats that have been steamed and rolled a second time to make a thinner flake. They cook in about a third the time as “old-fashioned” oats.
Steel cut oats are just that - instead of being rolled the groats are cut with knives. The finished product takes much longer to cook and the finished recipe is much chewier and has a lovely earthy taste.
1/2 cup rolled oats = 151 calories, 3 fat, 0.5g sat fat, 1g mono fat, 5.5g protein, 27g carbohydrates, <1mg sodium, 0mg cholesterol, 1mcg Vitamin K