Oatmeal and Soya Milk

The weather continues to be chilly and damp, and while I still have my sweet tooth I'm getting bored of rice porridge. Although I really want to make an entry on sibot chicken soup sometime soon.

Here's something much quicker:

Vitamilk is my favorite brand of soy milk right now. It's from Thailand, comes in 10-ounce/300mL glass bottles at about 25 Php a pop, with a very creamy consistency for something that doesn't actually contain dairy, and it's quite a bit sweeter than other brands of soya milk (which I can guess is probably from lots of sugar and that makes it bad for me, even though the soya bean is probably one of the first break-out stars of healthy-alternative foodstuff and so soya milk can't be unhealthy...Sugar! So much sugar!)

As of the time of this writing, Vitamilk comes in four flavors: plain (that is to say, sweetened), chocolate, double chocolate, and my favorite (pictured above)...black cereal, or "Vitamilk: Energy" as it's branded.

The black cereal flavor contains black sesame, black rice, and brown rice. While "cereal" is more of an agricultural term than a botanical classification, there is some cerealness (cereality?) to the flavor. If my body went by flavor cues alone, a bottle of that would hack my body into thinking it's had a full bowl of corn flakes.

Today, though, I want something to actually chew--that'll stick to the walls of my stomach.

Hence, quick-cook oatmeal.

Oats, scientific name Avena sativa, is a grain grown in temperate climates and some geographically elevated parts of India that can imitate a temperate climate. Oat groats and steel-cut oats, which are the least processed for human consumption, go rancid fairly quickly and must be pre-soaked before cooking, then cooked for half an hour at least, and the oatmeal made from groats tends to be difficult to chew. (According to Wikipedia. I've never eaten less processed groats myself.)

When oat groats are de-husked, steamed, toasted, rolled into flat flakes, and then left to dry, then they are called "rolled oats". Rolled oats have a longer shelf life and shorter cooking time compared to the oat groats, although are less nutritious after husk removal.

Quick-cook and instant oatmeal are essentially the same as rolled oats, the difference being that they are rolled much thinner--quick-cook being rolled thinner than rolled oats, and instant rolled even thinner than quick-cook oats so it rehydrates faster. I say "rehydrates" because they are technically already cooked and only need to be rehydrated. However, knowing this, I have experimented with rehydrating instant oatmeal in cold water and room-temperate water, and I can say that hot water is really the best way to develop the gluten and soften the oats right away.

In this case, I mean...hot soya milk. Why add the soya milk afterwards, to water-boiled oats? That'll just dilute the flavor, and it's not as if soya milk curdles or gets a skin on top of it like dairy milk would.


That's for the ingredients, now for the directions:

I pour the soy milk out into a saucepan, bring it to the slightest of simmers, sprinkle in one cup of quick-cook oatmeal, take it off the heat and cover for about five minutes.


While quick-cook oatmeal instructions advise a ratio of three cups of liquid to one cup of oats, I prefer my oatmeal to be much much thicker, about 1.5-2 cups of liquid to one cup of oats.

I won't post a picture of the finished product in a bowl because I accidentally ate it all again even if I could be bothered to set up better lighting to take a good picture, it just doesn't look appetizing. It's a gray mulch. Still, I think it smells really good and is perfect to start a dreary, gray, damp, chilly morning!

I topped it with some banana slices, too--the banana was too sweet, the slices wilted in the heat of the porridge, and it just didn't mesh well. Since it was a dessert banana variety (lacatan), I might have better luck with a milder-tasting banana such as a cavendish, or a cooking banana such as saba. Or I could just eat the banana separately.

I'm also tempted to make a sort of egg-drop oatmeal. Maybe next time. With the double chocolate Vitamilk.