Overnight oatmeal, but during the day?
September 9, 2020 1:29 PM   Subscribe

I love the way oatmeal turns out when I cook it overnight in my slow cooker, but I want to eat oatmeal for lunch. How can I make this work?

To make overnight oatmeal, I put a big Pyrex measuring cup in my Crock Pot (resting on a bit of metal so water can circulate underneath). I do one cup of oats, 3 cups of water, more water in the Crock Pot, set it going, and in the morning it is the perfect oatmeal. But I want to eat this delicious oatmeal later in the day. Leaving it going all morning makes it dry out, and I can't start it cooking in the middle of the night. Is there something I could be doing with my Instant Pot to make the perfect creamy it's-like-I'm-at-summer-camp oatmeal for lunch? And if so, can a Pyrex mixing cup go in a pressure cooker?
posted by The corpse in the library to Food & Drink (7 answers total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
Could you plug your slow cooker into a smart plug or other sort of timer, prep it, and have it turn on in the middle of the night? Similarly, I think the Instant Pot has both a slow cooker setting and a delayed start setting so you might not need an additional piece of hardware. The longer soaking-but-not-cooking time may have an impact on the final cooking time necessary or create some other issue, but I think it would be worth a shot.
posted by papayaninja at 1:35 PM on September 9, 2020


If you can put it in the oven, you can put it in the Instant Pot. For sure the Pyrex baking dishes meant for the oven are OK-- measuring cups, I don't know.
posted by blnkfrnk at 1:42 PM on September 9, 2020 [2 favorites]


Most Instant Pots have a delayed start function that can be used with the slow cook mode, check the manual for your model to confirm how to do this on yours.

If you're looking to pressure cook instead of slow cook, I would not use an irregular-shaped vessel like a pyrex measuring cup, but you could definitely try pot-in-pot oatmeal under pressure and see if you like it. (My preference is a Corningware French White round dish of whatever size I need, but anything ovensafe will work.) This one is from a long-time IP recipe developer, this one has pot-in-pot and single-pot versions. (Single-pot is a much bigger mess to clean, is my observation.)
posted by Lyn Never at 1:46 PM on September 9, 2020 [1 favorite]


I've used a ten dollar plug in timer with a crock pot that had a simple turn-the-dial-to-high switch to delay the start for several hours until the timing worked; I wouldn't use it for Creamy Chicken Surprise, but leaving damp oats for a few hours before the cooking starts should be pretty safe.
posted by Superilla at 2:50 PM on September 9, 2020 [1 favorite]


I’m not sure what your timeline is like, but can you just make the oatmeal and start the cooker in the morning? You may find it doesn’t need the full overnight time to get to the right consistency. You could also mix your water and oatmeal and keep it in the fridge overnight, and put it in the cooker in the morning - the soaking will definitely get it partway there and require less cooking.
posted by obfuscation at 3:52 PM on September 9, 2020 [1 favorite]


Try thermos oatmeal? You can adjust the water to make it thicker/creamier.
posted by stefnet at 4:09 PM on September 9, 2020


If you try this, make sure to let the thing depressurise on its own time. Otherwise the oatmeal may make its way out of the container during the pressure release like a mutant oat monster.
posted by quacks like a duck at 1:31 AM on September 10, 2020 [1 favorite]


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