Healthy Recipes With Oats And Oatmeal

Oats. What comes into your mind when you hear this word? White mushy food in a small bowl looking at you innocently, craving for your attention. You might like it or not - this small bowl has immense potential to keep your health in check. Let's have a look at some oatmeal recipes to make your meals healthy and tasty.

What are Oats?

Formerly known as Avena sativa, oats are a type of cereal grain from the Poaceae grass family of plants. What we eat as our cereals, is nothing but the edible seeds of oat grass. Due to its high volume of beta-glucan soluble fibre, phosphorus, thiamine, magnesium, zinc - oatmeal has been a prized dish for those who want to keep their health in good condition. It has a positive effect on heart disease, diabetes, weight loss and digestive health.

When cooking with oats, it is advisable to use rolled oats instead of instant or quick oats available in packaged varieties as the latter may contain added sugars. It's best to add your own toppings and flavouring to unsweetened oats to keep added sugar to a minimum. With this in mind, let's find out some interesting oatmeal recipes.

Recipes

1. Sweet Oatmeal

Cook your oats as you normally would. Rolled oats may take 10-15 mins time to cook, whereas instant oats may take less than 2 minutes to cook. Add diced apples and cinnamon, or bananas and blueberries, or toasted walnuts, and banana slices to make your oatmeal nutritious.

2. Savoury oatmeal

We know about sweet oatmeal. But have you ever thought oatmeal could be made savoury and tasty? Simply add sliced avocado, peppers, black beans, salsa and eggs for a savoury twist on traditional sweet oatmeal.

3. Overnight oats

Who doesn't love pudding! Why not make it more healthy! Make
overnight oat pudding in a few simple steps. In a medium glass jar, add ½ cup whole
grain raw oats, ½ cup your preferred milk, ½ cup any chopped fruits (banana, melon,
apple, grapes). You can spice it up with some greek yoghurt or 1-2 tbsp chia/flax seeds,
nuts. Shake the mix well and refrigerate it overnight. Enjoy your oat pudding in the
morning

4. Oat risotto

Oats for delicious savoury dishes! No kidding. You heard it right! Toast the oats for a few minutes in hot oil with shallots or onion dice. Then just keep adding water 1 cup at a time and stir continuously until the oats are fully cooked. Sprinkle some shredded cheese and season with salt and pepper or your favourite seasoning. It may take around 25 minutes to prepare the dish.

5. Apple pie oatmeal

A delicious way to revolutionize oatmeal. Add apple soft
pudding into mushy oatmeal keeping the crunchy soft pieces on top of it. You'll get a swell apple taste in every bite of oats.

6. Brown sugar maple oatmeal

Prepare the oatmeal with your preferred milk and spread 2 tbsp of brown sugar along with fresh maple syrup! You can thank me later!

Oatmeal is one of the most nutritious foods, which has multiple positive impacts on our body. If you are looking for a healthy lifestyle, you must include oatmeal in your daily meal in any recipe you like.