I love oatmeal! In fact, it’s one of my favorite breakfasts on the planet. I start off nearly every morning with a bowl of steel cut oats, topped with seasonal fruit, nuts, and soymilk. So I was excited to invite Kathy Hester, the author of a new book on oatmeal, to my blog. Kathy is the author of the best selling cookbooks The Vegan Slow Cooker, The Great Vegan Bean Book and Vegan Slow Cooking for Two. She also shares delicious vegan recipes on her blog at Healthy Slow Cooking. In her latest book,
Kathy’s recipes are easy to follow, use easily found ingredients, and she wants you to know just how easy and fun cooking can be.
Why are you inspired to write about oats?
I tend to get a little obsessed with my favorite ingredients and cooking methods. That’s what made me a slow cooker queen and completely in love with oats. It started off innocently enough, with slow cooker steel-cut oats and then grew to over 40 oatmeal recipes on my blog, HealthySlow Cooking.com. They are all healthy, but many mimic the taste of everyone’s favorite desserts like, banana pudding, hummingbird bird cake and pumpkin coffeecake.
After you have 40 sweet recipes it’s only natural to start exploring the savory possibilities. I love being a mad scientist in the kitchen and coming up with things like a gluten and soy free vegan sausage crumbles that are made with oats. And then there’s my instant vegan oat cheez powder that is in a base of oat flour that makes it thicken up when you cook it.
How can oats be a perfect companion to a plant-based diet?
I believe all whole grains are the foundation of a plant-based diet. Oats are one of the most inexpensive grains, which helps bust the myth of a plant-based diet being more expensive. They are also very filling which is great for people transitioning from a meat-based diet.
You can also make oat milk versions of traditional dairy products like coffee creamers, cream cheese, yogurt, milk and you can even make a vegan cream liquor!
What are some unusual ways to include oats in a plant-based diet?
One of my favorite recipes is for steel-cut oat sausage crumbles, which are great on a pizza or even sprinkled on top of pasta. The spices are the same ones used in meaty sausage so it allows you to recreate some of your favorite food memories.
Oat yogurt is another of my favorites. The process is the same as with soymilk, only you do not need to add any thickeners because when you heat the oat milk it thickens naturally!
What are some quick tips for making oats easier to include in a plant-based diet?
Out of your usual plant-based milk? Make a batch of oat milk with rolled oats in less than 15 minutes. As an added bonus it’s the cheapest of the nondairy milks! Missing thick, rich cream cheese on your bagel? Make your own with oats and cashews for 100% plant-based version without any unpronounceable ingredients.
Overnight refrigerator oats and slow cooker oats that cook while you sleep are both great because with either of them you wake up to a ready-to-go breakfast!
Here’s one of Kathy’s favorite plant-based recipes from her new book.
This is one of my favorite staples and I keep some in the freezer all the time for last minute pizzas. The spices give it a traditional Italian sausage flavor. The oats give it a chewy texture and the spices even turn the oats the color of sausage. It’s at home on a pizza or sprinkled over biscuits and gravy.
Ingredients
Scale
1 cup (237ml) water
1/2 cup (40g) steel-cut oats, gluten-free
2 teaspoon rubbed sage
2 teaspoon marjoram
1 1/2 teaspoon granulated garlic
1 teaspoon basil
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
1 teaspoon thyme
1 teaspoon oregano
1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon salt, or more, to taste
1/4 teaspoon cayenne, or to taste
1/4 to 1/8 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 teaspoon ground rosemary or 1/2 teaspoon regular
Instructions
Preheat oven to 350 and cover a baking sheet with parchment paper.
In a saucepan add the water and oats, bring to a boil then turn the heat to low and cook for 10 minutes covered. Mix all the other ingredients in a bowl and set aside.
Cook uncovered for 5 minutes while stirring to help get some of the moisture out. Remove from heat and add in the spice mixture and mix well.
Spoon the oat mixture onto the parchment paper and try to distribute it as close to evenly as possible. Then tear a second piece of parchment paper and put on top an flatten the mixture as much as possible.
Bake for 10 minutes, then pull out and cut lines into the sausage with a spatula. You aren’t trying to move it, just to make more places for steam to escape.
Bake for 5 more minutes. This time scrape and break up the sausage into crumbles with the spatula.
Bake 5 more minutes and it should be easy to crumble. You can sprinkle on pizza and you can even freeze the leftovers for another time!
Notes
*Recipe is gluten-free, soy-free, oil-free
*Nutrition Information Per ¼ cup serving: 42.5 calories, 1.8 g protein, 0.8 g total fat, 7.3 g carbohydrates, 145.3 mg sodium, 1.3 g fiber
Note: I am not a spokesperson or profiting from these products or companies; just providing my own unsolicited opinion about popular products, services, and organizations in the food world today!
