You can make delicious and nutritious oatmeal using oat groats if you own a mortar and a pestle. Regular oat meal is made from oat groats.  The oat groats are cut, steamed, and flattened to reduce cooking time. Purchasing the whole oat and cooking the whole grain or pounding it yourself before boiling ensures you get most of the benefits from the whole grain. Further, our body digests the cooked whole grain slowly releasing the sugar into the blood stream at a slower pace and giving a longer period of satiety.

I wanted to purchase a mechanical grinder to mill grains into flour. The grinder costs more than $600. Two years ago, I purchased many grains including whole oat (oat groats), wheat berries, peeled barley, and millet. I didn’t purchase the grinder. I made porridge with the grains. I only have few cups of millet, barley, and oat groats left. I have more than 50 lbs. of wheat berries in my pantry. The whole grains held well in my pantry without any special storage. In the past, to make porridge with hard grains like barley oat and wheat, I soaked overnight.

I changed water and boiled for an hour or two until the grain was soft.  Whole grain porridge has chewy texture.

To break oat groats a little this time, I put some of the soaked grains about 1 cup in the mortar without water. I pounded for about 5 minutes or so and poured in the pan.

I repeated the process and pounded the grains until they broke in pieces. I rinsed the mortar and poured the water on the pounded grains. I added water to the pan and brought to a boil.

I reduced the heat to medium and boiled for about 30 minutes. My kids told me it smelled oatmeal in the house. I served them and they loved it. I didn’t even add milk. The porridge was thick. I have made enough for few mornings.

I am not going to say it saved time. But I am glad I can cook oatmeal using whole grain without owing a grinder.