Crock Pot Oatmeal

Well it is Crock Pot Monday and I have a different twist to this day.  Breakfast in the crock pot is what we will be making today.  With these cooler morning temperatures I had a craving for this oatmeal.  The beauty of this recipe is that you can add your favorite dried fruits to the oatmeal. I hope you will enjoy this recipe on these cool fall and into the winter mornings.

Steel cut oats and your favorite dried fruits and some water is all you need.

Today I am making half of the original recipe so I added one cup of steel cut oats.  You have to use steel cut and not regular oatmeal.  You might find Irish oats and they are the same as steel cut.  The oats look like little pellets.  It looks like more like a feed for animals to me.  It has a little different taste too.  The fruit helps with that until you get use to it.

A closer look at the pellets.

I started with some dried cranberries.  The recipe calls for 1/3 c but I finished out a bag that I had so it is more, but I like a lot of fruit in the oatmeal.

I chopped up the rest of my bag of apricots.  I have also added dried peaches too, but I was out of those.

Chopped up some dried cherries.  The cherries are a little bigger than the cranberries, so I just rough chop them.

Dump the dried fruit on top of the oatmeal.  I didn't measure the fruit and you don't have to either just put as much as you like in and whatever you like.  I have a friend that has made this with dried apples and some cinnamon.  Then she added some nuts after it was cooked.  I haven't added any nuts during the cooking process.  Not sure how that would work.  I have added them after.

Add 4 cups of water.  This is still a half recipe.

Everything all stirred up in the crock pot.  I use a liner for this because it can get messy on the sides. Put the lid on and cook overnight on low.

This morning this is what I found in my crock pot.  All you need to do is stir it well to mix up the fruit.  The fruit plumps up and rises to the top.

My bowl of oatmeal this morning.  The rest I store in a container and then get out what I want each morning.  I reheat it in the microwave and I add just a little butter for moisture.

Crock pot oatmeal the full recipe

2 c steel cut oatmeal
8 c water
1/8 t salt
dried fruit