A Week of Alton Brown Day 7: Overnight Oatmeal

Today is the day, ladies and gents!  James and I will drive to Baltimore in just a few hours to see Alton's Edible Inevitable Tour at the Lyric Opera House.  In the front row.  Did I mention that before?

I'm so excited!!

To celebrate, we're ending our week of Alton Brown recipes with Overnight Slow-Cooker Oatmeal.  This is another that we've made many times.  James is the slow-cooker expert in the house and tinkered with the recipe to get it just the way he likes it.

Ingredients: 
Non-stick cooking spray
1 1/4 cups steel cut oats
2 cups dried cranberries (less if you like your oatmeal a little more savory)
1/2 cup half & half
4 cups water

Procedure:

• As the title states, you prepare this Oatmeal the night before you'd like to eat it.
• Spray the crock of your slow cooker with cooking spray and wipe down with a paper towel.
• Measure out your ingredients and dump them into your crock.
• Steel cut oats look different than other kinds of oats.  They're essentially whole "groats" that have the hull removed (but not the bran, so there's still lots of nutritional goodness) and are cut into pieces about the size of sesame seed.  They take a longer time to cook and are traditional in Ireland.
  
  
  
  
• I enjoy these whole dried cranberries from Trader Joe's because they're not quite as sweet.  Cranberries, besides adding flavor, are rich in antioxidants.  But you can use any dried fruit that you'd like.  Alton's original recipe had a cup of dried figs, but those were too sweet for us.  Golden raisins or dried cherries could also be great in this recipe!
  
• Give the contents a stir before clapping on the lid.
  
• On other crock pots James has owned, we've found that laying kitchen towels over the edges of the lid helped to keep the food moist.  His current model has a tight seal on the lid, so we don't find that necessary anymore.
  
• Set your slow-cooker on low for 8 hours.
  
• Go to sleep!
• When you wake up in the morning, you'll have delicious, ready-to-eat oatmeal.  It will need a stir and I admit - it won't be pretty.  But when is oatmeal really ever pretty?
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• James and I have had trouble with the oatmeal drying out on the sides, but we always have plenty to eat for the two of us - even leftovers.  We believe it's because the slow-cooker is so large.

I hope you've enjoyed the week of Alton Brown and that you'll check him out on YouTube or Hulu.  He has been a huge inspiration to my cooking and I'm sure I'll be talking about him many more times in this space.  A true lover of food and cooking and fun in the kitchen - which is what it's all about for me.