One of the trickiest aspects of implementing the traditional method of soaked oatmeal in order to maximize nutrition, eliminate anti-nutrients, and considerably improve digestibility is getting used to the slightly sour taste.
Some of you are even going so far as to rinse the soaked oatmeal after cooking, for example, in an attempt to lessen that slightly sour taste that some find unpleasant. Unfortunately, these efforts are not working very well for those of you that have emailed me about it.
I’ve got a better idea!
In the video below, I talk to you about the single easy step required to quickly adjust your family to soaked oatmeal.
I also talk to you about the huge benefit to your backside of soaked oatmeal and tell you the story about my 3 kids and their experience eating unsoaked oatmeal versus soaked oatmeal.
If you ever doubted the need for soaked oatmeal before, after hearing this story, you may find that you change your mind!
For those of you who want to take the plunge and prepare your first batch of soaked oatmeal, check out my recipe plus video lesson on preparing overnight oats.
How you cook the oatmeal is the critical step that most people completely miss and which determines how much nourishment and benefit you will actually derive from the experience.
Preparation also determines how long the oatmeal will fill you up. Â What good is a bowl of oatmeal if you are hungry again and ready for a donut by 10 am?
Preparing your oatmeal the traditional way as practiced for centuries by ancestral societies will take a little planning on your part, but you will be greatly rewarded with a much more nourishing, digestible breakfast that will stay with you all the way to lunchtime!
Traditional peoples knew through observation that grains were very hard to digest and caused health problems over time for those who consumed them without careful preparation.
Throwing out those toxic boxed breakfast cereals that are at least twice as expensive per serving and replacing them with a simple, nutritious bowl of soaked oatmeal will also help your food budget considerably with no loss in pleasure or enjoyment particularly on chilly winter mornings!
How to Easily Adjust to the Taste of Soaked Oatmeal
In this short video, I explain how to adjust to the unique flavor of overnight oats without any loss of enjoyment.
The process simply involves soaking with water only at first and gradually moving toward the most beneficial soaking medium. The speed of transition depends completely on your unique set of taste buds.
More Information
Soaked Oatmeal Benefits Without the Soaking?
Why ALL Boxed Breakfast Cereal is Toxic
There is no recognized, definite and single cause for heart disease or diabetes. Why would a Western child be more prone to metabolic diseases than say a Kitavan who eats a diet composed of mainly nutrient-poor but energy dense starch? Because he’s sedentary? Give a kid plenty of good nutrient- and energy dense food and he will be nothing but sedentary. If his teacher forces him to sit down for hours on end, switch schools to a more movement focused one, or homeschool. There are options.
We started eating grains 2000 years ago? Really, no. I mean, you’re really way off here.
If a plant can’t be eaten raw, but digests nice and easy when first fermented and then cooked, and you feel a good energy after eating it, I’d say eat it like your ancestors did 11,000 years ago, possibly even 25,000 years ago.
“So what you are doing essentially is send your kids off to school with not vitamins and proteins — just a mass of starch and fat”
You mean grass-fed butter doesn’t contain vitamins? Also consider that bowl of oats if it was served with liver pate and a fried egg? You may be right about the nutrients in the bran and germ ‘disappearing’ after having been broken down during fermentation, but that’s irrelevant. Most ancestral cultures did not bother with the germ and bran–they discarded it. They didn’t know it was full of minerals, they only knew it didn’t digest very well, and didn’t taste very good, and didn’t store very well. The human body runs very well on pure starch, and that’s what they were after. Macro nutrients play a significant role in health, not just the little guys.
I think your criteria for good health are far more eaxcting than mine, cause when I review reports on cultures who subsisted largely on starches, they seem to be in a quite admirable state of health. I’ve seen plenty well-developed beautiful faces on people whose diets include rice, corn, wheat, oats. They have low rates of caries and degenerative disease. They’ve managed to reproduce for generations, and I think that in particular says a lot. Consider how quickly people loose the ability to reproduce on a less than optimal diet. Pottenger’s cats were sterile after 3-4 generations and I think we’re seeing a similar effect in the Western world as we speak.
The only thing I’ve read about physical activity in hunter and gatherer societies, is that work duration was typically 4-6 hours per day. I stay home all day taking care of my kids and most days I feel like I never get the chance to sit down! People who take care to soak their grains and otherwise prepare traditional foods, can hardly be considered couch potatoes. There’s so much work involved. I think couch potatoes don’t bother with these type of blogs and nutrition advice.
“Even the person who wrote Nourishing Traditions has never been in a lab…” Really? You are definitely showing your ignorance here. NT was co-written by Mary G. Enig, PhD. The doctorate is in the field of lipid chemistry. I think she may have spent more than her fair share of time in labs…
Please, Oliver, instead of the overly critical replies on this site, READ “Nourishing Traditions” and “Nutrition and Physical Degeneration”. Perhaps people who follow WAP principles may actually take your comments a bit more seriously.
It sounds like you would be most happy taking in your meals in a laboratory setting, after each item has been carefully analyzed for nutrient content, and then see whether or not your body was able to absorb said nutrients and in what form.
I have no desire to go there. I can understand the zealousness, I think there was a time when I felt I had to know all the little details, but I’m a much happier eater not striving for absolute knowledge. It’s such a recent development that we’re even capable of knowing these minutiae. Is it healthy? Are we able digest our food, break it down and absorb when we think about the process so carefully? Do we even have to go outside the borders of our own food cultures, and into a fairly obscure history to find the answers?
Like I said previously, I’m fine knowing that whatever food I choose to eat has been tested and tried without any major repercussions. If butter was so horrendously artery-clogging, there’d be no Scandinavians today, and no Tibetans either. Etc.
But in your lab, you might have found that Scandinavians are currently dying from heart disease because it’s been brewing throughout the generations for the last 10,000 years, and is just now making itself known. But when I compare old Swedish farmers with the younger generations, they really do *look* healthier, even though they shouldn’t be because they grew up eating porridge and lots of dairy. They’re well built, they have broad faces, wide nostrils. Strong jaws. These guys are mowing their enormous lawns and carrying heavy stuff into their 80s, 90s. They have a clear mind. If dairy kills you, they wouldn’t be alive, they wouldn’t have been born.
It really boggles my mind to suggest that the only people qualified to have an opinion about food and nutrition, are those with a fancy degree and extensive lab experience. It’s food, for crying out loud. Everyone eats it, and thus are equally qualified to determine what’s good and what’s not. You eat and you feel how it makes you feel. You’re equipped with a fair amount of intuition to understand and make the connection between what you ate a few hours ago and how you feel now.
Sure, humans are the only animal eating cooked food, but there are so many other things we’re alone about. It might go hand in hand. But who knows, history can’t be relived, so we can only make educated guesses based on whatever ‘evidence’ we happen to find. Until another piece of evidence comes along to invalidate this or that theory.
By the way you articulate yourself, in absolutes, you must know better though. So please inform me. I’m well known for being open minded:).
I have been soaking my steel cut oats, and seriously I don’t know why people make a stink over it. You just do it when making dinner and then cook a huge amount the next morning. I still do get hungry if I eat them soaked (and yes I do eat with a ton of butter/coconut oil) which is why I MUST have it with 2 eggs. I like to reheat mine with coconut milk and cinnamon and then add a banana. It is very very creamy!
Maybe try rolled oats? I would imagine that steel-cut oats take longer to ferment than rolled grains. Generally, if a grain based food doesn’t stay with you, it means you’re not digesting as much starch as you’re taking in. Or you could be having a low metabolism and you simply need more calories for some time.
I whole-heartily agree with unsoaked grains not lasting. I need 2 bowls of oatmeal if I eat it unsoaked and the kids are back in the kitchen eating the leftovers an hour later if it is unsoaked.
When using lemon juice as your acidic medium, can you use organic bottled lemon juice or does it have to be fresh from the lemon?
Thanks
Of course, fresh lemon is always best but I use the organic bottled (not from concentrate) and it is real quick which is what I need right before bedtime.
I have always rinsed off the lemon or whey or whatever soaking medium I was using. Didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to! After all, if the anti-nutrients are soaked out, they must be in that soaking medium liquid, right? So I just rinse and it helps quite a bit.
The phytates and other antinutrients are degraded, not leached out. So they no longer exist in the form it was originally in. No need to rinse. Consider sourdough bread. The dough isn’t rinsed after fermenting.
I’ve been reviewing traditional grain recipes and water is often the only medium used. It’s possible that adding an acidic medium speeds up the process, but apparently, it’s not necessary for fermentation to start.
If you don’t taste any sour flavor, it may be that no fermentation has taken place. It doesn’t always work and at times it takes more than the 12-24 hours called for in Nourishing Traditions. I live in a northern clime and when I’ve soaked flours in buttermilk (no water at all), even after 24 hours, oftentimes nothing has really happened. I found an old traditional Swedish recipe for bread soup that calls for soaking old sour dough bread in water for 5-6 days. Indian recipes for idli and such however, call for only an overnight soak, but their room temp is significantly higher than ours (with added humidity). In Ethiopia, injera can be made in three varying degrees of fermentation, and each bread has a different name. The first is only slightly fermented after a day or so, and the third is very sour having fermented for several days.
As for adding buckwheat to oats, it’s meant to put some phytate-degrading phytase into it since oats have been heat processed with the phytase destroyed. Buckwheat is a bit of a pain to prepare since the saponins should be rinsed off. However, adding a bit of rye flour to the oats would be easier and I think the phytase level is higher in rye anyways. I think grains without phytase can be soured too, but you wouldn’t know unless you soaked the oats in water only since the added whey and such could be the only thing contributing to a sour taste.
Just wondering. Would taking enzymes containing phytase with a meal containing non-soaked grains break down the phytates sufficiently?
@Jim all the videos are categorized under the “Videos” tab at the top of the blog in the header.
Great timing! I soaked oatmeal using lemon juice for this morning and my husband asked what the tang was in his oatmeal! I thought lemon sounded good but maybe I should have used whey instead for the first time.
When soaking whole wheat flour for making bread, what exactly do I do? Do I just measure out the needed amount, pour water and say, kefir on it and let it sit over night? Then the next morning do I rinse it before making it into bread? Or just run start making it into bread right away and cut back on the normal amount of liquid I use? Is it better to use half unbleached white flour and half whole wheat? This soaking thing, whole wheat being bad for us, white rice being better than brown bit is new to me and a little frustrating. I feel like my nutritional rug has been jerked out from underneath me. Just trying to figure out the adjustments I need to make. Thank you!
I simply do not now, nor did I ever, understand how to “soak” flour.
And how in the world would you ever rinse off soaked flour? It doesn’t even make sense. I’ve been baking for 40+ years and if I make something with flour I just use flour – I don’t do anything at all to it. My kids grew up on traditional toll house cookies and they hate it when I mess with the recipe. I tried it with whole wheat flour a few times and they howled their heads off. Nope, some things just have to be traditionally made (in the sense of original, not NT type traditional). We don’t follow any WOE (way of eating) 100%. Never have. Sometimes we break tradition and do our own thing, which isn’t all bad. We have too many things to worry about these days and stressing over food isn’t going to help. Just do the best you can.
Sally Fallon claimed that whole grains were used by traditional people I’m assuming because Price said so in his book. I think Price was biased what with all the dietary trend towards vegetarianism and whole grains being better that was floating around his time even. He eventually abandoned his veggie stance, but I guess he stuck to the whole grain myth and didn’t bother to see if the grains used by his populations had the bran and germ removed. There are some accounts of whole grains being used by traditional people, but more common is the refined form.
It’s totally understandable that you feel like your nutritional rug has been jerked out from underneath you. I was similarly swayed by the whole grain is better arguments. The first and foremost is that bran contains minerals. Well, the idea that one food should be a complete food, I think is also somewhat ridiculous. If you eat nutrient-dense animal fats with your refined grain, there’s no problem, right? No one is going to live on grains alone. This is the sort of thing that biotechnological experts worry themselves with when trying to come up with a single superfood to feed ‘the masses’ (in Africa mainly) because apparently they don’t deserve a diet that includes more than one food?
And then there’s much talk about starch being bad for you, but in looking at the many traditional diets we know of, starch has been a major component. Energy is good, it’s what our bodies need to maintain life, right? All those great micronutrients would be useless with the fire to make use of them.
Check out Peter Rienhart’s book “Whole Grain Breads.” He “ferments” his whole grain breads, not necessarily for nutrition but for taste. The 100% whole wheat bread is started the night before and half of it can be soaked in buttermilk. The other half of the flour is soaked in water/yeast (I still want to play around with that and trying using an acidic medium). The next day I don’t have to add any other flour. It makes the lightest bread.
About soaking flour for bake goods, I would like to share my method and ask you what you think of it. My daughter doesn’t like the taste of soaked flour with yogurt or with whey in her muffins. So, I started soaking the whole grain of spelt in water and apple cider vinegar 8 to 24 hrs. Then I rinsed the grains and dried them for 24 hrs in the dehydrator. After that, I can ground them to make flour and … make muffins or any other goodies. It works great for us. Let me know what you think!
Traditionally, the entire grain is soaked only to make it soft enough for wet milling, then the mass is fermented further. I don’t think a whole lot of fermentation is taking place when using the entire grain soaked in water.
The only food I can think of that consists of fermented wheat kernels is bulgur in kishk, but that’s using cracked wheat that first is boiled, then dried in the sun, bran removed and then cracked into fine particles. This can be made into kishk, where the cracked wheat is mixed with yogurt and left to ferment for 10 days, including daily kneadings.
See this article about ‘ancient bulgur’
thanks Sarah…are all these videos posted on your site? where we can refer back to them later? thanks