Oats may not have always been used for the breakfast dish we know and love today, as other cereals were much more popular. Make sure you don’t add extra sugar or salt to your porridge as this will undo all your good work – instead, try adding a banana or some fruit for extra sweetness. For every 80g that you add it will be one of your 5-a-day at the same time.

The World Porridge Making Champion title is awarded for the best porridge made only using oatmeal, water and salt. There's also a Specialty award for the best porridge which has other ingredients added. The book Sue Lawrence's Scottish Kitchen: Over 100 Modern Recipes Using Traditional Ingredients has a porridge with stewed rhubarb recipe. Most likely because the outer surface of the pieces of oat are too rigid to expand nicely as the moisture inside them turns to steam at high pressure. The cut surfaces aren’t large enough to permit the steam to escape. Slow cooking allows the surface to soften, then expand. Microwave is simply too fast. Eating in has a coconut milk porridge recipe using pinhead oatmeal or oats and is served with blueberries, banana slices and coconut flakes. The Fence is the first in this series of post-apocalyptic military survival thrillers from the torturous mind of Scottish horror and science fiction novel writer C.G. Buswell.A thinner and more watery version is known as gruel. This is more likely to have been eaten by prisoners such as Ronnie Barker in the TV series Porridge about prison life! Porridge seems to be derived from an old English word, Pottage meaning a soup or stew, or from the French word Potage meaning that which is put in a pot. Over the centuries here in the UK, the word seems to have slowly turned into porridge as we use it today. Why is Porridge so Popular in Scotland? A Pinch of Salt – The addition that every die-hard Porridge-eating Scot will swear to. Adding salt will add a depth to the flavour of your porridge but when you add it is vital. Too soon and it can toughen the oats, too late or as you serve it and it gets lost or worse only sits in one or two spoonfuls. Porridge is a healthy, nutritious way to start the day. However, there is much debate about which oats are the best to use and which cooking method is healthiest.

You can soak your oats overnight to speed up the cooking time – oatmeal, particularly pinhead oatmeal, takes longer to cook than the ready-steamed, rolled flakes. It takes such a long time to cook that I’m ill-disposed towards it from the start, but even so, I’m prepared to swear there’s no difference to the flavour. By the 1640s porridge was a meal popular in Scotland which consisted of oats cooked with milk or water with veggies added such as peas. Porridge is our top choice for a heart healthy breakfast – when it is made with low-fat milk or water and unsweetened. All porridge oats are wholegrains and they all contain a soluble fibre called beta-glucan, which can help lower your cholesterol level if you have 3g or more of it daily, as part of a healthy diet. (A 40g serving of porridge oats contains 1.6g of beta-glucan.) As well as this, you’ll be getting the fibre from the whole grains, plus there is no added sugar or salt. A bowl of cooked oatmeal is a more rustic experience as the texture is more grainy and nutty but delicious non-the-less. Rolled oats Porridge has been consumed in Scotland as a staple food since the Middle Ages, and is primarily consumed in the winter. A&R Scott began producing Scott's Midlothian Oat Flour in 1880, in Glasgow, [1] moving to Edinburgh in 1909, and the distinctive name, Scott's Porage Oats, was adopted in 1914. [1] They have been milled at the Uthrogle Mills [2] at Cupar in Fife, Scotland, since 1947. [1]The Book Maw Broon's Cookbook has another traditional Scottish porridge recipe which suggests using a mixture of coarse and medium oatmeal though with a cooking time of thirty minutes. Buy Maw Broon's Cookbook at a discounted price and with free delivery available. Mix the Scott's Porage Oats and remaining herbs together and rub in the margarine. Cover top of dish evenly with oat topping. Yoghurt and honey – Why not keep it simple, after all, it’s a taste combination that seems from ancient Greece, so who are we to say it doesn’t belong on your porridge! What are some Scottish Porridge Recipe Traditions?

Using low-fat milk or water is recommended by the British Heart Foundation. Milk obviously has more calories than water but it should all be considered as part of a healthy and balanced diet. Scottishrecipes are not sure why it was eaten standing up but some theories include standing being an aid to digestion or that farmers and crofters who ate it to fill them up for a busyThe very cost-effective oat fast became a regular part of the diet in Scotland from the early medieval period onwards. This popularity can be seen in the use of oats in Traditional Scottish dishes like Haggis, Oatcakes and Cranachan, as well as porridge, which itself may have developed from an older recipe called Brose.