Have you noticed what a pain steel cut oats are? 
I know, I know, it’s a whole food, it’s good for you.
But I’ll let you in on a little secret: steel cut oats are just a bunch of high maintenance whiny babies needing constant hand-holding. There. Said it.
Sure, the name sounds all tough, Steel Cut, and they look tough (if one got in my running shoe, I’d limp home), but clearly, someone is overcompensating there.
If you get the regular kind (I even got the Irish version; they sound fun, right?), versus the “quick,” you’re supposed to boil them for nine days an hour. Oh, and stir frequently, too. Stir me, don’t walk away, stir me, come baaaack. Waaaahhhhh.
My nine year old is more independent, even with all her braid my hair and feed me dinner and buy me new socks.
Why would I deal with the morning equivalent of risotto? Yours truly has lost count of the number of burned steel cut oats incidences around here.
Then, there’s the slime factor when it undoubtedly boils over when you slip away to let the dog out and in and out. Slime on the stove, slime in the microwave (yes, *gasp* she tried the “quick steel cut oats” in there). Yuck. Leave that slime too long and congratulations, you’ve created a new, impervious shellack.
I’ve even made it in advance, carefully, in the evening when I was practically sober more attentive and focused, but in the morning I had a steel cut oat brick to enjoy. Yuck again.
I’m currently eating the “quick” kind which surprise! boiled over with the lid on (okay, it was another pan, not a lid, because I’d have to bend over and open a cabinet to hunt for the proper lid). And yet even with half the water sizzling on the burner, the oats managed to end up as “oat soup” possibly eye-balling the water measurement at the start is discouraged.
But it’s good for me, right just like every other soul-crushing, heart-shattering moment in life?
I just don’t think I’m strong enough for breakfast anymore. Where’s a Pop Tart when you need one?
Do you have a trick for cooking steel cut oats?
