Can You Use Steel Cut Oats In Baking

anakopa/iStock/GettyImages

Manufacturers plow oat grouts into four products: steel-cut, quondam-fashioned, quick and instant oatmeal. The amount of processing involved distinguishes the types. Most baking recipes that call for oats, including cookies and crumbles, phone call for some type of rolled oat -- usually old-fashioned or quick cooking. Still, steel-cut oats can be substituted for the rolled type in most recipes with a few adaptations. Wait a slight difference in texture and season when yous use steel-cutting, only it'll be tasty withal.

When cooked for 30 to 40 minutes in hot h2o or milk, steel-cut oats outcome in a nutty, chewy porridge rather than the gooier mash you become when rolled oats are used. Steel-cut oats are made when the oat grouts are mechanically split into several pieces. Where every bit rolled oats, which are also called old-fashioned oats, are steamed before being pressed and stale. Considering they've been precooked, they reabsorb water readily and melt quickly. Quick-cooking oats are rolled oats that take been pressed fifty-fifty more thinly, while instant oats are the thinnest of all.

Rolled oats and all their variations are softer and faster cookers than steel-cutting versions, which makes them a ready ingredient for baked goods. The question is whether steel-cut oats volition be able to melt chop-chop enough when made into cookies, bars and crumbles.

Cooking or soaking the oats alee of time prevents baked goods with steel-cutting oats from being gritty and too hard. McCann'south Irish gaelic Oatmeal company suggests subbing one-quarter of all the quick cooking or old-fashioned oats called for in a recipe with cooked, steel-cutting oats. The cooked oats add a creaminess to the texture of the baked skillful and a nutty season.

Attempting to replace all the dry rolled oats in a recipe with an equal amount of cooked steel-cut oats volition only effect in a batter that's substantially heavier and may non bake up as you lot expect — cookies or staff of life may be as well dense and heavy to broil to a proper consistency. Some recipes, such as this one for steel-cut blueberry muffins, practise use cooked steel cut oats only, only they have adjusted the ratio of liquid and dry ingredients accordingly.

Tips

As an alternative to cooking, soak the steel-cutting oats overnight in milk or water earlier using in a baked good only stick to replacing only 1/iv of the total oats called for with the soaked steel cut. Soaked oats volition have a higher moisture content and heavier density -- also much could negatively affect a broiled skilful's outcome.

So, if you're making a cookie that calls for i cup of quick cooking oats, add together nearly ane/2 cup of cooked or soaked steel-cut oats and 3/4 cup quick-cooking oats, uncooked.

Steel-cut oats can't exist used in lieu of rolled or quick-cooking oats on crumbles or crisps -- the results volition exist too gritty if the oats are used raw or mushy if the oats are cooked.