There was a noticeable trend in the so-called 'healthy food' videos I happened to see on Instagram. It involved using ground oats as an alternative to flour. Can oats really be a healthy substitute for flour? It may sound impressive to call it by its English name, but in fact, oats are processed oats. Whole grains are hard and difficult to eat cooked, so they are peeled, steamed flat, or ground into products.

 

Oatmeal is broadly divided into three types depending on the form of processing. The first is instant oatmeal. The grains are ground to the point where they almost turn into powder, almost like crumbs. As a result, you can eat it immediately by adding water, but both the taste and texture are not very pleasant. In fact, it feels more like horse feed than a meal for humans. The second is pressed oatmeal. It is flattened like pressed barley, so although it is not instant, it can be cooked and eaten quite quickly. Again, it is not very tasty.

Finally, there is steel-cut oatmeal. Whole oat grains are cut into two or three pieces with a metal blade, which is how it got its name. Compared to the previous two types of oatmeal, it takes significantly longer to cook, but it has a good chewy texture and a quite nutty flavor. It is also well known as a traditional Irish dish, and when prepared as 'overnight oats' by soaking overnight and cooking in the morning, it is much less cumbersome and tastes delicious.

While reducing cooking time to make eating more convenient by sacrificing taste and texture, all three types of oatmeal share a common feature. They all process the remaining components after removing the shell. Grains are composed of husk, kernel, and endosperm. The endosperm, which makes up the body of the grain, is the primary source of nutrients necessary for the sprouting of the germ and is mostly made of starch.

In other words, barley is the carbohydrate we know, and here, barley and snow add to balance fiber and other nutrients. All three types of oatmeal we looked at earlier are processed from whole grains with only the husk removed, so there is essentially no difference in nutrients.

 

Therefore, even if you grind oatmeal into flour and use it instead of wheat flour, it can be a healthier alternative to white flour, which is made by completely milling wheat and removing the bran and germ, leaving only the starchy endosperm, i.e., carbohydrates. However, keep in mind that oat flour lacks gluten, the protein responsible for elasticity and chewiness, so it cannot fully replace wheat flour in baking.

 

Oatmeal, a good source of minerals such as vitamin B1, manganese, and magnesium, is eyeing the position of a superfood. As oatmeal becomes popular as a breakfast menu in the United States, adding brown sugar and other sweeteners has somewhat diluted its positive health effects. If you want to incorporate oatmeal into your meals, it is better to buy plain oats without additives, season them with salt, and cook them into a bland porridge.

 

As mentioned earlier, the shorter the cooking time, the less flavorful the result, so I generally recommend steel-cut oats. In fact, since we have a pressure cooker, cooking can be much easier. Taking it a step further, you can buy whole oats and add them to rice to make porridge. It’s slightly coarse but hearty. If you add too much, the rice can become sticky.

 

 

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I saw on Instagram yesterday

They also grind oats to make tortillas.

 

It continues to come out as a healthy snack.

 

There are also many different ways to make it.