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I usually eat and cook porridge when I have other people around to eat it, but when I am alone, I feel like it is wasted time and just eat something simple like bread. I still like porridge with fruits but I do not want waste time on it. I have wondered whether I could save time with ideas such as:

  1. Cook porridge in the evening and warming it up in the microwave in the morning;

  2. Leave it with a lot of water on the warming iron at the lowest temperature;

  3. Buy some sort of automatic porridge cooker with a timer (probably a water-cooker so there is less worry about burning it)

  4. If some automatic cooker exists, could I at the same time cook eggs, porridge and bacon with some sort of automatic timer?

hhh
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  • Chat here. – hhh Sep 09 '12 at 00:08
  • Solo-cooking, or cooking for one? – TFD Sep 09 '12 at 00:13
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    Please don't ask people to add tags for you. If it doesn't already exist, there's usually a good reason. – Aaronut Sep 09 '12 at 00:16
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    Can you elaborate what type of porridge you intend to make? With rice? With oat? With some other type of grain? It might be a culture bias on my part but somehow I get the impression you are talking about rice porridge while the information below are about oat. The more information you can provide, the more information we can reciprocate. – Jay Sep 09 '12 at 09:56
  • @Jay read tags! – TFD Sep 09 '12 at 20:40
  • @TFD Aaronut had made a change to the tags so I wasn't sure if the OP added oats or Aaronut added it. – Jay Sep 09 '12 at 22:04
  • @Jay OK. What's Aaronut comment about tags then? – TFD Sep 09 '12 at 22:41
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    @TFD He said not to ask other people to add tags. That doesn't mean he couldn't have added tags that he thought was appropriate. Regardless, you seem way too antagonistic so I'm done with this convo. – Jay Sep 09 '12 at 22:47
  • @Jay .........? – TFD Sep 10 '12 at 00:58
  • @TFD @Jay I disagreed with Aaronut about the label -issue but let this question evolve a bit. I am agnostic about the type of porridge, removed a label not to confuse. The key issues here are single-person and efficiency. I asked to label this question with alone-cooking which makes this question I think pretty different to cooking in a family or some other way. Since I am doing it alone, I also want to do things efficiently. Perhaps some speed-cooking -label? My motives clear now for the scope of the question? – hhh Sep 10 '12 at 02:16
  • @hhh : comments aren't the right place to discuss what tags we should add ... I've created a question on meta to handle the topic – Joe Sep 10 '12 at 02:39
  • @hhh It's pretty important what type of porridge you are referring you. Methods that work for oat(such as the microwave would not work with rice). – Jay Sep 10 '12 at 02:51
  • @Jay If you look at the chat, I mentioned that some sort of two-kettle-device to cook rise exist -- you have water in between the kettless (one inner kettle and one outer kettle). Then you can use that to cook the rice lazily. – hhh Sep 10 '12 at 02:52
  • @Jay again I am not interested about cooking per se, I am interested about efficiency and one-person-cooking porridge. Pretty different to selecting certain porridge -flavour, I care less -- it needs to be just fast done for a single person -- the fastest single-person -porridge-cooker wins! It can also be fast with water-kettle, I try to lead this thread to the water-kettle thing that makes porridge cooking a breeze -- there is a water between the iron things so it does not burn...and you can leave it for the night. Ofc there may be faster ways like the microwave :) – hhh Sep 10 '12 at 03:01
  • @hhh With no Oats tag the answers provided make no sense any more. It should be closed, you can't substantially change the question after most answers have been given? – TFD Sep 11 '12 at 23:33

4 Answers4

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You can cook a single serve of porridge in the microwave very easily

Place oats and water or milk (or water and milk powder) into a microwave safe serving bowl, and cook on high for about 3 minutes. Stir and let stand for a couple of minutes, and it should be just like "mums"

TFD
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  • Nope. A typically microwave will blast them all fine from cold. I add fruits at then end due to personal preference. They still get hot, but not stewed that way – TFD Sep 09 '12 at 00:26
  • @hhh Please don't mark as correct answer until a day or two has pasted as other people here are much more experienced and may not bother answering now – TFD Sep 09 '12 at 00:27
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I make steel cut oats in a slow cooker, stick them in the fridge and then slice off a chunk to eat each day.

In a slow cooker add
2 cups steel cut oats
8 cups water
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Cook on low for 8 hours. When complete, let cool some and transfer to another container and refrigerate.

The next morning, scoop out a hunk into a bowl, splash a little milk on it and heat it up in the microwave. Add fruits and toppings as desired.

For safety, the cooked porridge should be discarded after 5 days.

BaffledCook
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Jacob G
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    How long does this last, not go bad? One week in fridge? – hhh Sep 09 '12 at 05:10
  • I've still had some after about 10 days and it was just fine. Because there are a couple of us in the house that eat it, it's usually gone well before then. – Jacob G Sep 09 '12 at 14:21
  • @JacobG, I don't think 10 days in the fridge is a risk worth taking for a porridge. I'd ditch it after 5 days (like pasta), tops. – BaffledCook Sep 10 '12 at 08:25
  • It's grain, water and sugar. As long as it's in an airtight container and you pour off any excess water, it should definitely last longer than pasta. – Jacob G Sep 10 '12 at 13:49
  • @BaffledCook Most likely it will taste awful after a week or two as it starts to ferment. Bacterial issues are minimal for that recipe – TFD Sep 11 '12 at 01:51
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I usually just boil water in a kettle and pour it into a bowl of rolled oatmeal. Technically it's not porridge because it's not cooked, but it tastes OK and provides some carbohydrates for the first part of the day. Sometimes I add fruit, jam, condensed milk, honey when it cools down a bit.

Mischa Arefiev
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You can make a cold porridge by placing oats in yoghurt and leaving it in the fridge overnight.

citizen
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