Lately, my favorite breakfast is a giant bowl of creamy crock pot oatmeal, hot from the slow cooker.
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It brings back memories of visiting my grandparents’ house as a young girl.
Grandpa believed steel cut oats were the healthiest food you could eat, and he’d get up every morning at 5 AM to make sure that a bowl of piping hot oatmeal with melty butter and brown sugar would be waiting for us when we all awoke.
Sometimes my sister and I tried to beat Grandpa into the kitchen. But no matter how early we snuck out of our beds, he was always two steps ahead of us, bowl of oatmeal in hand.
Below is my basic crock pot oatmeal recipe. You can easily customize it for endless breakfast options.
Crock Pot Oatmeal Recipes
- Cinnamon Raisin Crock Pot Oatmeal: add raisins before cooking. Stir in ground cinnamon and sweetener of choice (and butter-type spread if desired) after cooking.
- Mounds Bar Oatmeal: add shredded coconut, sweetener, and chocolate chips after cooking. Use coconut milk when it calls for milk of choice. Slivered almonds optional.
- Apple Pie Oatmeal: peel 2 small apples, chop, and add them to the uncooked ingredients along with 1/2 tsp to 1 tsp cinnamon or apple pie spice. After cooking, stir a butter-type spread and sweetener of choice (good choices for this variation include brown sugar or Sucanat or coconut brown sugar) into hot oats.
- Peanut Butter & Jelly Oatmeal: stir 1-2 tbsp peanut butter and 1-2 tbsp jelly into each cooked serving of oatmeal. Pour some milk of choice (such as almond milk) over top just before serving. Everyone knows a pb&j is nothing without the glass of milk!
Crock Pot Oatmeal
This healthy crock pot oatmeal recipe is an easy slow cooker breakfast.
Ingredients
- 3 cups milk of choice or water
- 1 cup steel cut oats (160g)
- 1/2 tsp salt
- add-ins of choice (see above for flavor ideas)
Instructions
- Slow Cooker Oatmeal Recipe: Combine all ingredients in a slow cooker or crock pot, put on the lid, and cook on low heat for three hours. No need to stir or anything until the time is up! I use a 3-quart slow cooker for this recipe; cooking times may vary if you use a much-larger size. If you double the crock pot oatmeal recipe, cook for 5-6 hours on low. (If you don't own a slow cooker, you can of course still make steel cut oatmeal. Just follow the cooking directions on the package of oats.)View Nutrition Facts
Notes
Readers also love these Banana Oatmeal Cookies.
Like this recipe? Leave a comment below!
You know what’s really good, make the oatmeal as outlined by Katie. Put it in a baking dish, mix in some raspberries or strawberries, sweeten to your taste, sprinkle some coconut flakes and then broil so the coconut gets toasted. So yummy!!!!
Hahahaha, I like your Italian Gma! I didn’t really know my grandmothers due to age of death, but I had a good family friend who I announced was my adopted grandmother, and she was a back country woman. She made the best venison dishes, ribs, smoked anything, and pancakes with real fresh bacon. I loved it as a kid, but now I just enjoy the memories associated, asI ‘m vegan now too. She was convinced I’d grow out of this phase.
Hey is it weird if I suggest you should make passion fruit oatmeal?
I make oatmeal in my rice cooker. I put the oats in with water/milk at night, set the timer for when I wake up and I have nice hot oatmeal.
Love hearing about your grandparents and some of the comments are so funny. My Nana prefers a whiskey, according to my dad she was too busy enjoying free love in the sixties & seventies and never cooked more than a fish finger. We love her but boy do we all pray she doesn’t cook when she visits. Her mum, my Great Nana was the best baker I’ve ever had the pleasure to know.
WOW. ive tried so many way to cook steel cut oats. I did mine with 4 cups water one cup oats. Perfect in 3 hours. So creamy i cant believe it. so much better than recipe on the can. thank you
Katie- Your recipes are really innovative and unique, I’ve gotten countless of recipes that I use weekly from your blog- including OATMEAL! Your blog has inspired me to start my own blog. It started as a classroom blog but I wanted to include recipes and workouts. I’ve included a link to yours on my blogroll. If you checked it out that would be awesome! Thanks for all the recipes!
http://aburgwin.wordpress.com/
Thanks Andrea. I am off to check it out :).
I love Almond Joy style oats with unsweetened shredded coconut + dark chocolate chips + almonds 🙂 I’ve heard that oats in the slowcooker can get very messy and stick to the sides… Did you use a liner?
I didn’t… it didn’t stick, but maybe it depends on the particular machine you have. (Mine is very old!)
I’ve always wanted to try making oatmeal in my slow cooker so I could have it throughout the week, but like a lot of things, I just haven’t gotten around to it yet.
And yes, my grandparents were good cooks – I loved my grandpa’s borscht and perogies, and my grandma’s Russian pies. Yum!
Just made this and it was a hit with the fam, thanks for you love for healthy food and being willing to share it with everyone else!