It's rather ironic, years ago the instructions for cooking steel-cut and Old-Fashioned oats included an overnight soak. You will find variations of this recipe, but it's the one I use. -Grainlady

For steel-cut oats: Bring 4 c. water to a boil in a pot with a lid. Remove from heat. Add 1 c. steel-cut oats + 1-2 T. whey, yogurt, kefir, buttermilk, or dairy-free options - lemon juice or vinegar. Stir. Place the lid on the pan and set aside until the next morning. Cook on low for 9-12 minutes (add salt if you'd like). Stir occasionally.

Helpful Hint: Stop cooking the oatmeal when it is still a little "loose", not as think as you would want the oatmeal in the bowl. Put the lid on for a few minutes and it will thicken up. If you cook it until it's as think as you'd like, it will be too thick when you serve it.

You can also adjust the ratio if you'd rather make more, or less, oatmeal. It keeps well in the refrigerator for several das, or you can also freeze it.

Pan the extra in a small loaf pan and refrigerate it. Cut it into thin slices and you can fry it like you would French Toast, or freeze the slices on a baking sheet, then store in air-tight storage in the freezer. You can use the slices (thawed) for oatmeal or fried.

Thanks Grainlady. I like the French Toast Tip. I can even soak in an egg for some extra protein.

I use McCann's Steel Cut Oatmeal. The directions on their can work really well: The night before bring 4 cups of water to a boil; add 1 cup steel cut oats; bring back to a boil and immediately turn off the burner. Leave sit over night and reheat when needed in the morning.

FYI - The addition of an acid (dairy or non-dairy) to make an acidulated water for soaking/cooking the oats, helps to neutralize the hard-to-digest phytic acid. You can skip the addition and just use the water method off McCann's Steel Cut Oatmeal, but you won't reduce the phytates, and that's why I soak or sprout grains, not just to hasten the cooking time. For anyone who has problems digesting grains, this soaking method will help. It's akin to pre-digesting the grains.

Oats just happen to contain more phytates than almost any other grain. The healthy lactobacilli from the acid ingredient do their "work" during soaking. You don't get the same results using water only.

In fact, I add some dried sprouted buckwheat - 1-2 T. per cup of oats, or rye flakes I make from spent rye I dehydrate after making Rejuvelac. I use sprouted buckwheat I make at home, or you can use something like Bob's Red Mill or Hodgson Mill Hot Buckwheat Cereal or rye flakes. Why this addition.....?

"Oats contain a large amount of hard-to-digest phytates and other anti-nutrients. Unfortunately oats are so low in phytase (the enzyme that helps to break down phytates), that soaking them in warm water mixed with an acid medium is not enough to adequately break down the large amount of anti-nutrients that naturally occur."

"With the help of some additional phytase added to the soak (in the form of rolled rye flakes, or if you’re GF use ground buckwheat groats - both are high in phytase) - along with a full soak time - a fairly decent amount of the anti-nutrients can be removed, making the oats more digestible and nutritionally sound."

I also add some buckwheat to Old-Fashioned Oats and buttermilk (or kefir) when I make a traditional Irish scone which requires an overnight soak before making the scones. I also add some buckwheat when I make oatmeal pancakes with an overnight soak.

Soaking oats does more than just make them cook quicker, soaking them correctly also makes it easier to digest and increases the nutrition.

-Grainlady

Hi,
Cooks Illustrated published the following recipe:
4 cups water (or 3 cups water, 1 cup milk)
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup steel cut oats
Boil 3 cups water, remove from heat, add oats and salt, cover and let sit overnight. Stir in 1 cup milk or water and bring to a boil over medium high heat. Reduce heat to medium, stirring occasionally until oats softened but still retain some chew, mixture thickens and resembles warm pudding (4-6 minutes). Remove from heat, let stand 5 minutes and serve.
Also looking forward to trying grain lady's recipe.
MJ

Grainlady, Do you use different oat/water ratios for old fashioned oats? We always try to soak our oats here too, and most all of my baked goods are sourdough for the reasons you mentioned. I liked how you noted the irony that the instructions used to include an overnight soak... we've lost so much of our food heritage with the advent of convenience foods and with it our nutrition has taken a nose-dive.

Thank you! I usually soak mine with enough water to cover the oats and a big spoonful of yogurt, then I cook it on the stove in the morning adding enough milk to cook properly, but it's always a guess. It will be nice to have set amounts of oats/water instead. I also let mine soak overnight on the counter, rather than in the fridge. Concerns my husband until I remind him that yogurt cultures work best at 115 degrees so the fridge is too cold for them to do their 'job'.

Grainlady, according to a site called Phytic Acid (link attached), the soaking method doesn't work with oatmeal due to insufficient quantiteis of the enzime that breaks down the phytic acid. The suggestion is to add a small quantity of phytase-rich grains to the oatmeal for the overnight soak.

excerpts:

"Food bloggers have taken a cue from food writer Sally Fallon in her book Nourishing Traditions and have soaked grains overnight in warm water with a dash of whey or yogurt in order to reduce the phytic acid content in the grains. Phytic acid does, indeed, inhibit your absorption of minerals (calcium, zinc, iron, and magnesium to name a few).
The soaking strategy does work to reduce the phytic acid because it activates the phytase enzyme in the grain to break down the phytic acid. The phytic acid disappears like a traditional foods miracle and you get more minerals out of your food. The problem with oatmeal is that it lacks sufficient quantities of phytase. Soaking it will make it cook faster and that is a great thing on a busy weekday morning, but the soaking does not help from a phytic acid perspective.
... add a bit of fresh ground wheat, spelt, rye, or buckwheat to the oatmeal and then soaking it. The phytase in these other grains will work to reduce the phytic acid in the oats. I have recommended using about 10% of the complementary fresh ground grain to 90% oatmeal, though often I add a heaping tablespoon to a cup or so of rolled oats. Soak the oatmeal in water above body temperature overnight in a warm spot. Use the same amount of water you usually cook it in and simply throw it all in the pan in the morning. I do not recommend using the yogurt or whey anymore, just stick with the complementary grain for more diligence."

Would that be correct? You're far more knowledgeable than I am, and I'd very much like to hear your opinion.

Supposing it does make sense, I wonder whether it would be enough to just dump a bit of buckwheat without grinding it first. I vaguely remember reading somewhere that buckwheat is very rich in phytase.

Here is a link that might be useful: Phytic Acid site

WinterCat-

Thanks for linking to phyticacid.org. It's been a long time since I visited there and I'll have to go back and do some more reading to see what's new. It's a part time job keeping up with all the new findings and food science..... I know I have a file with some of her information in it.

I am aware of this information and touched on that issue 5 posts from the top. I mentioned adding buckwheat or rye flakes to oatmeal and a brief bit of information about why, but the link really clears-up the issue. Thanks.

-Grainlady

Thanks, WinterCat, for a great reference that perk my interest. I have no problems with digestion when I bought old-fashioned oats at Walmart ..... love that stuff. Then my husband bought Shur-fine brand of old-fashioned oats ... it tasted fibrous like cardboard ... really hard to digest.

Even among sweet corn, there are differences. Growing up in Michigan, we grew the most tender corn ... I could eat 10 ears of corn a day ... no problems with digestion. But the store-bought frozen corn tastes fibrous & hard to digest. One time I paid extra money to buy the Non-GMO organic corn ... it captured the taste of the corn we used to grow in Michigan. I believe that GMO (genetically modified foods) can raise the hard-to-digest component of grains.

Same with bran cereal. Fiber One bran cereal caused digestive ailments due to GMO plus artificial fiber. But I have NO problems with Barbara's Organic Non-GMO natural fiber cereal .. eat that right before bedtime and slept great.

Dr. Andrew Weil wrote: "Phytate-associated deficiencies of iron and zinc occur in some third-world countries where people mostly eat grains.

Bear in mind that cooking reduces a food's phytic acid content to some degree, as does soaking whole grains prior for use in baking. To help this breakdown, you can soak them in yogurt, buttermilk, or water combined with lemon juice or vinegar.

You also should be aware that phytates themselves have some health benefits, including anti-inflammatory effects. In laboratory research, phytates have helped normalize cell growth and stopped the proliferation of cancer cells. They also may help prevent cardiovascular disease and lower a food's glycemic load. - Andrew Weil, M.D."

The below link explains that phytates in grains is NOT a concern unless it's NOT a balanced diet. See excerpt:

"Consuming foods rich in ascorbate (vitamin C) with foods rich in phytate can cancel the negative effects of phytate on mineral absorption.[1, pdf] Just eat some fruits and vegetables with foods that supply phytate.

Some studies have shown substantial degradation of phytate in the human gut (70-86%), indicating that humans adapt to diets high in phytate by increasing small intestinal production of phytase. [2 full text link, 3]

I have never seen any evidence that dietary phytate causes mineral deficiencies except in the context of overall poor quality diet, such as people attempting to live on diets composed entirely of unleavened grains and legume flours without adequate intake of vegetables, fruits, and other mineral sources."

**** From Straw: A good portion of sesame seed is GMO (genetically modified). My sister grew up with sesame seeds in Vietnam, but lately she developed an allergic reaction to the GMO sesame seeds in America. I believed that GMO (genetically modified) foods evolve faster than our human gut can adapt. That explains why I can eat 10 ears of home-grown organic corns with no problems, but find GMO corn hard to digest.

Here is a link that might be useful: Phytates facts

Strawberryhill-

Phytates in oats are contained in the bran. During the oat bran craze in the late 1980's, some people were consuming large amounts of oat bran for any number of "health" reasons in the form of cooked cereal, added to meat loaf, oat bran muffins (I think I still have a recipe clipped from the back of the box of oat bran).....

There initially were health benefits, but the longer they consumed large quantities of oat bran, some ended up having detoxifying effects, mineral losses, ended up with allergies and irritation of the intestinal tract. I had one friend who experienced some of the negative effects from over-consumption of oat bran. She is also lectin-intolerant, so that only contributed negatively to her "gut" issues. There has been some information that lectins may be inactivated by soaking, sprouting, cooking or fermenting.

Long before most people enjoyed bread they ate "gruel" and "porridge" made from a large varieties of seeds and grains, and they were generally eaten after an overnight fermentation. They left in the pot on the hob where it continued to ferment, and reheated for several days. Fermented foods are pre-digested foods, making them easier to digest.

There were reasons for many of these traditional cooking methods. Today, people just take Tums and never connect their gastrointestinal problems to foods and how they are prepared.

When I was eating a Macrobiotic diet, I made Miso Porridge using naturally-fermented miso and an overnight soak, so it's a traditional method used by many ethnicities, interesting enough. The Gaules ate millet porridge. In Northern Europe, oat and rye porridges were eaten daily. An old Russian proverb says, "Porridge is the mother of us all".

-Grainlady