Basic Porridge Recipe

By Céline · March 6, 2024

There's one food that's practically on my meal plan every single day: oats. Whether as porridge, overnight oats, in pancakes or mixed into granola with yoghurt: oats always work! A nice bonus: these little things are really healthy and keep you full for a long time.

Especially in winter, I make a warming porridge almost every day, topped with fruit or nuts to guarantee a filling and healthy start to the day.

My love for porridge wasn't always this strong, though.

When my mum first told me about porridge, I thought it was just a mush made of oats without much flavour. That didn't exactly fill me with enthusiasm.

When we were in London shortly afterwards, she gave me a spoonful of her porridge to try. Well, what can I say. It was ok… but not much more than that.

For that reason, I couldn't really understand the trend of eating porridge for breakfast for years, until one day I decided to give the trendy new dish a go after all. So I took a pan, plus oats, a pinch of salt, some milk and water, and started the experiment. Of course, I added a generous helping of cinnamon to the oatmeal and garnished it with fresh fruit. To my surprise, I found that the homemade porridge tasted really good, was quick to make and kept me full for an incredibly long time.

Since that day, porridge has been almost part of our daily routine at home. By adding fresh fruit, cacao nibs, desiccated coconut or nuts, you can vary the taste to your liking and conjure up new flavours all the time.

The origins of porridge

Once known as a meal for old people – today a trendy dish we can no longer imagine life without. More and more people are reaching for the healthy oat mush. But where does this trendy dish come from?

Porridge has its origins in Scotland. There, the oatmeal was especially popular with working-class families, the "poor people", because it was cheap, still kept you full for a long time and provided important nutrients for physically demanding work. Back then, the dish wasn't just eaten for breakfast, but also for lunch and dinner.

Today, porridge is happily served for breakfast, refined with spices and topped with fresh fruit, nuts and cacao nibs. A meal that keeps you full for a long time and is pleasantly easy to digest.

Thanks to complex carbohydrates, fibre and minerals as well as plant-based protein and numerous vitamins, porridge is a real nutrient powerhouse.

Or to put it another way – an energy store that ensures the perfect start to an active day.

The one true basic recipe for a creamy porridge

This porridge recipe is a typical base recipe. The classic breakfast bowl is quick to prepare, tastes delicious and is healthy. You can add spices, fruit or other toppings of your choice to the porridge as you like and create your own favourite bowl.

Basic porridge recipe – a timeless classic for every day

Preparation2 min
Cooking time15 min
Total17 min

Calories235kcal
Carbohydrates35gof which sugars 6 g
Protein10g
Fat5gof which saturated 3 g
Fibre5g

per serving

CategoryBreakfast OatsCoursePorridgeCountryUSAOilVanilla Oil Wild Orange Oil

Serving:1

Ingredients

50 g oats
300 ml water
100 ml milk or plant-based milk of your choice
1 pinch salt
1 drop vanilla oil or 1/2 tsp vanilla powder (www.magiederoele.ch)

Method

Pour the water and milk into the pan and heat.
Add the oats, the vanilla and 1 pinch of salt and cook over low-medium heat (level 4 of 9), stirring occasionally, until you get a creamy, porridge-like consistency.
Shortly before the end, you can refine the basic recipe as you like, e.g. with cinnamon or cocoa (see notes).
Pour the finished porridge into a bowl and decorate with fresh fruit or nuts (see notes)