All things porridge

It is hopefully a well known fact by now that I am a porridge worshipper. Porridge is without a doubt the best food in the world. I have it twice a day. But that's all old news. New news is I've been wanting to take my porridge eating experience to the next level. Ever since I read on Wikipedia that true Scottish porridge is not made with rolled oats but with steel cut  I've had a niggling feeling that I've been missing out. Recently however this niggling feeling has become a full blown mission ever since deciding that it might be easy to find steel cut oats now I live in England. Unfortunately this is far from true. However never one to shy away from a mission I am determined to track down some steel cut oats!

Firstly though everytime I explain my mission to someone I get totally blank looks followed by the question what are steel cut oats... or more simply "what?". So here's a quick explanation.

Porridge (as we know it) is made from oats that have had their outer husks removed, also called oat groats. Oat groats are not flat, this is what they look like:

Rolled oats are flat they are made by steaming and flattening and often flaking oat groats. Often packets labelled as "Scottish porridge" are actually whole rolled oats where the oat is a flattened whole oat - however this is not true Scottish porridge. Rolled oats look like this:

Steel cut, pinhead, or Scottish Oats are made by cutting oat groats into smaller pieces, and make a more textured, chewier and more nuttier flavoured porrridge (so I'm told). Steel cut oats look like this:

Don't they look yummy!

I so far have a couple of leads on where I can obtain some... stay tuned for updated!

xxx 

Mindy