Can someone describe what *baked Amish oatmeal* is supposed to taste like??

M

marilynfl

Moderator
Yesterday, when TCFH (The Cold From Hell) abated long enough for me to try and eat something other than chicken broth or potato chips, I made Smitten Kitchen's Caramelize Pears in Baked Oatmeal. The photo is amazing.

Mine, on the other hand, looked pale and insipid.

But the deal breaker was the oatmeal portion. Now I loved cooked oatmeal and I also love raw muesli (is that redundant?). Anyway, it's raw oats soaked with apple juice and other stuff topping it. I can do chewy. I actually LIKE chewy in this instance.

But this recipe coats the oats with something resembling a French toast batter: milk beaten with eggs and melted butter. But no sugar because a boatload is used to caramelized the pears and then more sugar is used to sweeten the heavy cream topping.

End result. The pears are amazing, but the oats were blandly chewy...and not in a happy chewy way. I ended up picking out the pear portions and ignoring the oats.

That seemed a real shame considering the time and ingredients it took to put this together.

So I'm asking you, the viewing audience. What kind of texture is Baked Amish Oatmeal supposed to have. Should it have been soaked overnight so that it was softer? Or is this what it is? Cause I really can't get on board with this. I'm going back to muesli and add caramelized pears to it.

 
Smitten Kitchen's Baked Oatmeal with Caramelized Pears and Vanilla Cream

Vanilla Sugar
1/2 C + 2 TBL sugar
1/2 vanilla bean

Split bean and rub seeds into sugar. Set aside. Save bean pod for cream step.

Vanilla Cream:
1 C heavy cream
2 TBL of the prepared vanilla sugar
Vanilla Pod

Simmer 5 minutes, reducing to 3/4 C. Remove pod. Chill.

Pears:
3 pears (Anjou, Bartletts or Forelle), peeled, cored, and sliced in half
2 TBL butter
1 lemon

Turn oven to 400 degrees. Zest half of lemon. Set aside. Squeeze juice from all of the lemon and toss the six pear halves in juice. Put butter in 9x13" pan and place in oven to melt. Sprinkle remaining vanilla sugar on top of butter and place the pear halves, cut side down. Add any remaining lemon juice. Cover with foil and bake 20 minutes. Uncover and bake another 10 minutes.

Oatmeal:
1 C milk
1 C water
2 TBL melted butter
2 large eggs
1.5 tsp kosher salt
2 tsp baking powder
3 C rolled oats
(lemon zest)

Whisk milk, water, melted butter, eggs, salt and zest together. Sprinkle baking powder and whisk to blend. Add oats and stir several times.

When pears have done their 30 minutes of baking, flip them and add as much of the sugar sauce as they can hold. Then add the oats around the pears.

REDUCE heat to 350 and bake 20-25 minutes or until pear is soft and oatmeal is golden around edges.

Makes 6 servings, topped with a drizzle of the cream. Each portion can be reheated per day up to one week.

Marilyn's Notes: My version took almost 45 minutes baking time to turn golden. Is it possible that made the oats tough?

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1101874813/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1101874813&linkCode=as2&tag=jenniferguerr-20&linkId=47e98ff65916c8a7eef8464d0f8b7792

 
To me the photo shows some pretty dry oatmeal

I kept looking at the recipe and thinking "something is wrong". Not enough liquid in the oatmeal part- and I bet she brushed or drizzled some of the sugar syrup on the top of the oatmeal to make it brown.

If it was me I would make oatmeal the way I usually do it, make the pears the way the recipe says and the cream- and forget the dry oatmeal recipe.

 
My $.02 worth, and as one who grew up on a farm near one of the Ohio Amish compounds...

Amish wouldn't do something so fussy. They'd cook their oatmeal and eat it the way we've always cooked oatmeal.

However, Amish sells. So my guess is some person bored with their food thought they'd bake their oatmeal and now they're trying to "sell" it as the latest food craze.

Slap the Amish on it. People immediately think old-fashioned, wholesome, and healthy.

The same way French, German, Authentic, etc. get slapped on other American creations to give them authenticity, and to sell them.

Slap German on your apple cake! Poof! It's an old-world classic even though no one in Germany would recognize it.

Etc.

 
I haven’t eaten it, but several recipes mention heating it and then pouring milk over the top

I’m not really an oatmeal person, but a lot of these recipes I’m seeing for baked oatmeal are all about being able to cut them in squares or bake them in muffin tins so you can take them to work or school. Which to me sounds even more gross than regular oatmeal, unless that oatmeal has a bucket of brown sugar in it, which Is why I don’t eat oatmeal on a regular basis because I want that bucket of brown sugar in it. I have seen people suggest When one gets to work warm it up and then pour some milk over it, preferably Almond milk because all these people are into being extra “healthy.” I’ve heard it mentioned that the baked oatmeal is firmer than normal oatmeal, which one would expect from oatmeal you can cut into squares.

 
Looked at a bunch of "plain" recipes (no pears) and they all seem to similar. I REALLY

don't get the egg in them, which sort of makes me think it really might be an Amish breakfast recipe--get the whole meal in a dish, get ready to work for the day. BUT if you get pinterest, there is a whole "cottage" industry of "amish" recipes. Who knows. ;o)
It is also surprising that they use regular oats (not quick cooking, which are NOT instant) in many of these recipes since those really do take longer to cook.
SO maybe it is supposed to be chewy. Agree that the picture looks really dry.
Back to stovetop cooked oatmeal!! LOL

 
Just like every other recipe title right now has "cast iron"

Does cooking it in a skillet make it different? They are just keying on popularity. America's Test Kitchen is guilty of this one...

 
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