Lacto-fermented porridge

We have the same breakfast without fail every single morning.  There have been a couple of times when we’ve tried to jazz things up and eat something different like toast and eggs for breakfast, but pretty much the next day we would always go back to eating our firm family favourite: lacto-fermented porridge!  And then we’d just look at each other and say, like Goldilocks, “Mmm, this is just right. Why did we think we needed to try something else again?”

There are so many reasons why it’s so good; I’ll do my best to recall enough to convince you that this breakfast is worth trying (if you don’t eat it already 😉 ). But first, what is lacto-fermented porridge?  Well, instead of cooking up our oats first thing in the morning as many people do, we let our porridge oats soak in a kefir (yoghurt will do) water mix and lacto-ferment overnight.  In the morning we cook it as usual, but the resulting porridge is now:

– probiotic-rich and fermented, making it

– easily digestible and nourishing,

– tangier and much tastier than plain porridge,

– quicker to cook, and

– smoother and not sticky or gluggy like ordinary porridge, which means

–  the dishes are SO much easier to clean! …and it doesn’t congeal into a solid lump like ordinary porridge does (inside your tummy or on the bench).

The kids love it, even though we eat it every day (even through summer!) and as a mum something I love about eating L-F porridge for breakfast is that there’s no waste and I know exactly how much food the kids have eaten at the start of their day.

Because it’s a hot dish (well ok, warm because the little ones can’t cope with hot) it means we always sit down together to eat in the morning.  Even if dad’s in a terrible rush to leave for work, he always sits down if only for a few minutes, which means we always start our day eating together, acknowledging one another and the new day ahead of us.  It’s a ritual we consider to be incredibly important to our whole family’s wellbeing and connectedness.

We cook our oats up with cinnamon and kelp salt, and now that we’re milk-free we use almond milk to serve and also a little bit of almond milk with the water when cooking.  These days we mix a mashed banana into the cooked porridge before serving to give it a bit of sweetness, but as you can see we used to soak some sultanas with the oats (they are so much better presoaked!) and if we have any, we might serve it up with stewed apples and/or pears.  Yum.

 

So if your curiosity is now piqued and you’re ready to give it a go, here is our recipe which I’m sure can be adjusted easily and with little risk of failure, to suit your own needs and tastes:

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For your interest:

Nourished Kitchen – “Fermented Food: Benefits of Lactic Acid Fermentation”