“Porridge.” “Gruel.” “Mush.” To judge it by its homely and unappetizing synonyms alone, oatmeal doesn’t have the greatest of culinary reputations.
Ever since the spread of agriculture, the majority of the world’s population has subsisted on a diet of cereals — millet and farro in Roman times, barley in medieval Europe, cornmeal mush in frontier America and present- day Africa, oats in Scotland and Ireland, and millet and rice for much of the world today.
Oatmeal has also suffered because of the introduction of rolled oats and instant oatmeal — products that add convenience but remove flavor, as anyone who has had a bowl of real cooked oatmeal will tell you.
There is no better wait to eat oatmeal than to slow-cook a pot of McCann’s Irish or Bob’s Red Mill Organic Scottish Oatmeal and finish it with a touch of milk, a pinch of salt, and nuts, raisins and a little brown sugar or maple syrup.
Or so I thought, until my wife, Yasmin, showed me her twist on oatmeal. Because she’s a pastry chef, she often uses a small blowtorch to finish her desserts — to make a sugar crust on crème brulee, to give a shine to chocolate desserts, to caramelize fruit.
Yasmin’s version introduces an element I didn’t realize was lacking from a bowl of oatmeal until I tasted it: a thin crisp crust of caramelized sugar, achieved by spreading a layer of brown and turbinado sugars on the surface of a bowl of cooked oatmeal and glazing it with a blowtorch. The sugar coating adds something — texture, contrast — that elevates a good bowl of oatmeal into a great dish.
John Broening cooks at Duo and Olivea restaurants in Denver.
