Episode: 1979
Title: HPR1979: How to Make Perfect Steel-Cut Oats
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1979/hpr1979.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 12:45:58

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This is HPR Episode 197.9 entitled How to Make Perfect Steel Cutouts.
It is hosted by John Culp and in about 11 minutes long.
The summary is, I explain how to make the perfect tasty, nutritious breakfast in a slow
talker.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by An Anastos.com.
Get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HPR15.
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Hey everybody, this is John Culp in Lafayette, Louisiana, sitting in my outdoor portable
recording studio.
In other words, my truck.
I tried to record a little while ago while I was walking around campus and it was a
little too windy.
When I listened back, I started editing the show and man, there was just too much wind
noise.
So I'm doing it again.
I'm sitting in my truck where I'm pretty sure it's going to be quiet and I won't get
interrupted and stuff like that.
So it's been a while since I recorded an episode but I've got a little bit of time and so
I'm going to record one today about something that's very important in my life and that
is oatmeal.
I've been an oatmeal enthusiast for quite a long time, maybe 15 years or something I've
been eating oatmeal, not every day or anything but quite a lot of days out of the year.
I'll eat oatmeal, especially during the cold season of the year which admittedly in
South Louisiana is not nearly as cold as it is in other parts of the world.
However, I love oatmeal for the affordability, it's hard to find a cheaper breakfast that's
more nutritious and it's also really, really tasty if you do it the right way.
And for most people, oatmeal means what's called rolled oats and that's what I've eaten
mostly for the last however many years I've been having oatmeal.
And those are the kind of flaky ones, sometimes they're called, what do they call them, traditional
oatmeal or old fashioned oats.
I think that's how they brand them, the Quaker old fashioned oats, I think they're referring
to rolled oats.
You can get quick oats where it cooks a little bit quicker but I've always just had the rolled
oats and the way I've prepared those is to have a ratio of water to oats that is two
to one.
So half a cup of oatmeal, one cup of water, I put it in the microwave for six minutes
on medium power and also usually throw in a quarter teaspoon of salt and then that makes
a nice bowl of oatmeal.
A couple of years ago though, I was at a comfort, not a common one, I was sent to Indianapolis
to be part of a focus group for some textbook publisher and they put us up at a really nice
hotel.
It was a great, awesome buffet for breakfast and one of the items on the buffet was a big
old bat of steel cut oats or also known as Irish oatmeal and man that was the best oatmeal
I'd ever had.
It had a different texture, kind of a nutty chewy texture to it that's very different
from traditional rolled oats.
And so when I came back, I bought some Irish oatmeal, some steel cut oats at the grocery
store and tried to prepare them at home.
It didn't go very well, it's been a couple of years, I don't really remember exactly
what happened but these things are different than rolled oats.
You have to cook them for quite a long time, I think the package directions say to simmer
on the stove top for 30 minutes stirring constantly.
That's a very high maintenance kind of thing to have to do, it's hard to have half an hour
every morning to prepare your breakfast and either I, I don't remember what happened
but they didn't turn out right, they were too crunchy and the texture was all wrong and
I pretty quickly gave up on them but recently I decided to give it another go and I tried
a couple of different methods of cooking before I finally hit on the perfect way.
So the first thing I tried was the rice maker which makes very good rice but it's not,
it's not ideal for trying to cook steel cut oats.
It does pretty well for rolled oats but it cooks it a little too fast and it just boiled
over and made a big mess and then it was still too crunchy.
So that was no good and I tried microwaving and this time instead of just microwaving
for a certain amount of time I think I did it.
Oh three different segments of about seven or eight minutes at medium temperature stirring
in between each one and that was okay but the texture was still not quite right and that
was kind of labor intensive.
I finally had the idea to try cooking them in a slow cooker or a crock pot if you will.
And that's the kind of thing that my wife uses all the time to make pots of beans or
things like that where you cook it for like eight hours at a really low temperature.
And the ideas you just throw everything in there, turn it on and then eight hours later
you've got your food and it's delicious and I had never tried this without me but it
seemed like a good idea so one night I threw in the ingredients for the steel cut oats
which it's a slightly different ratio than you would use with rolled oats.
For steel cut oats the ratio is four to one water to oats.
And so for one serving I use one quarter cup of steel cut oats and then one cup of water
and I did a little bit of math for the European audience who would not necessarily have access
to measuring utensils for these American units of measurement.
That would be about 40 grams of oats and 250 milliliters of water for one serving.
And so I think on my first try I made enough for four servings so I put one cup of steel
cut oats in the crock pot and then four cups of water and I also put a quarter teaspoon
of salt for each of those servings so one teaspoon of salt in all.
And then I cooked it from about I don't know 11 pm or midnight all the way until 5 am
when I got up and man it was great it's absolutely perfectly cooked it was so delicious and so
wonderful and so I realized man this is this is the way to do it you cook it in a slow cooker.
And so having found out that it worked so well I decided to get serious about it and
I dug out one of my old light timers because I don't want to stay up until midnight and wait
to turn the crock pot on nor do I want it to cook all night because that would be you know seven
or eight hours is too long it really needs to cook for about four hours at 200 degrees Fahrenheit.
So I found I've got four or five of these old light timers from the 70s or 80s or
whatever I don't know that they're these little plastic boxes you plug into the wall outlet
and it's got a dial on there that you turn around until it shows the current time and then
it's got these little plastic plugs that you position around the timer in such a way that it will
turn on your light at the time you say and then turn it off again at another time.
And it used to be that people would put these around the house on different lights while they
are traveling to make it look like somebody was still home and discouraged burglars.
I haven't used them in quite a long time but I got one out and plugged it in
next to the crock pot and plugged the crock pot into the light timer and set it up so that it
would turn on at one a.m. and then turn back off at five a.m. and put the ingredients all in there
and then the next morning I wake up at five and I've got a perfectly cooked batch of steel cutouts
and what makes this work also is that my wife decided she likes them and she's she's never really
liked regular oatmeal very much but she tried the steel cut oats and really liked it so now on
most days I'll make breakfast for the both of us by throwing all the stuff in the crock pot the
night before and we wake up to a perfectly cooked batch of piping hot steel cutouts it's delicious
and we have been buying the Quaker brand steel cut oats that comes in a little cardboard canister
and they're pretty good we also got some at the Rouse's supermarket where they have a big section
of bulk items where so I bought steel cut oats by the pound and it was maybe 299 a pound so not too bad
it's a little bit more expensive that way than buying the Quaker thing but in a pinch I can run
over there and get some but it's great stuff so if you have wanted to try steel cutouts for a while
but we're turned off by the labor intensive cooking method then this might be the thing for you
it really could not be easier it just happens while you sleep now you can't you can't do this
after you wake up in the morning because by the time it's ready it's going to be lunchtime and then
you might not want it anymore you really do have to get it ready the night before and then set
some kind of timer on it I think some of the newfangled crock pots actually have timers built in
but but this old-school light timer actually works just fine so that's the way I'm going to do it
anyway thanks for listening I hope you've enjoyed that and go make yourself some steel cutouts I
think you'll thank me for it bye y'all
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