Slow cookers are one of the most ingenious inventions ever made (that and the toaster oven). When you can just toss a bunch of ingredients in a pot, set it, forget it, and come back hours later to a warm, comforting meal, I say it’s a win. This is a breakfast must for those cold fall/winter mornings. Bonus points if you can set your slow cooker on delay the night before so you can wake up to a ready made bowl of oatmeal!
Fall Spiced Oatmeal
Ingredients
- About 1 to 1.5 cups Pumpkin purée (homemade is best!)
- 1 cup steel cut oats (dry)
- 1 medium to large apple (I used Gala)
- 3 to 4 cups water
- Lots of cinnamon
- 1 tsp or so of ground nutmeg
- 1 tsp or so of ground cloves
Instructions
- To make your own pumpkin purée, cut a small sugar pumpkin or pumpkin pie pumpkin in half, take out the seeds (save them and roast them!!), place cut side down on parchment paper and pop in a 400 degree oven for 40ish minutes or until soft. Scoop out the flesh into a food processor, pour in any liquid you are left with, add more water as needed to get a smooth blend (you can use any type of milk for a creamier purée), spice with some cinnamon, nutmeg, and ground cloves and voilà! You’ll end up with around 4 cups or so of pumpkin purée for the price of one 16 oz can (depending on your grocery store).
- Measure out your oats and pour them in your slow cooker. Mix in pumpkin purée.
- Add water (start with 3 cups) and stir. If you want to keep things on the moist side, you can keep adding water, but 3 worked pretty well for me.
- Chop your apple (you can keep the skins on) into 1/2 in cubes, or however you like. Toss in with the oats.
- Sprinkle in your spiced and stir.
- Turn your slow cooker on (high or low, depending on how much time you have) and let the magic begin. I set mine on the “brown rice” setting on delay, and this probably cooked in 30 to 40 minutes (I don’t know though…I was sleeping…).
- Serve it up how you like!
I eat mine with Greek yogurt and a drizzle of honey. You can add all sorts of toppings though. Maybe some granola for added crunch? In my opinion, you don’t need any extra sugar because the apple sweetens it up as it cooks. Play around with it! You’ll get about 5 servings to experiment with.
K Wadley's Kitchen 