Let’s hear it for John McCann!
No, not the Presidential hopeful. That’s not a typo.
I’m talking about John McCann, the elder, the guy who started making steel-cut Irish oatmeal 150 years ago and whose commercial descendants still produce the tasty breakfast cereal the same way today.
My dad, Bill, loved making REAL oatmeal on cold winter mornings when I grew up. As we lived in Westchester County, north of New York City, whenever it snowed, or dipped into the minuses, my dad would either make us REAL oatmeal, using McCann’s, or he’d pan-fry some minute steaks. One breakfast menu lowered cholesterol, the other raised it. Either way, though, breakfast was a major taste hit when my dad cooked for us!
The problem that most people have, though, with making McCann’s is that the hard-as-BBs oat grains take 30 to 45 minutes to make from scratch and you have to stir much of the time, or the porridge burns. And who’s got that kind of time to spend on breakfast?
My dad, Bill White, LOVED making oatmeal – the night before!
But my dad developed his own method of preparing this exceptionally tasty, exceptionally healthy cereal, an oatmeal shortcut, which he passed on to me:
Start the oatmeal the night before! In a saucepan over high heat, bring 4 cups of water and a pinch of salt to boil. Add 1 cup of McCann’s Irish oatmeal, stir once, remove the saucepan from the heat and cover. Say goodnight, Gracie.
In the morning, simply reheat the swollen grains, which will have absorbed ALL the water! They’re fully precooked, have all the natural goodness and flavor of the oatmeal that you otherwise would have spent 45 minutes making.
To serve, simply reheat the porridge over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally, for about 6 minutes… and you have REAL, authentic, unprocessed, non-GMO, whole-grain oatmeal on your table. In six minutes!
Prepared this way, McCann’s oatmeal loses a bit of crunch that is apparent when you make the cereal from scratch in 45 minutes, but the trade-off -- to let the porridge make itself while you sleep! – is worth this very slight loss of textural bite. Besides, who ever said oatmeal had to be al dente anyway?
My dad’s “shortcut oatmeal” has tremendous nuttiness; if you’ve added enough salt, it has a clean, ocean-like flavor, a perceptible minerality, an ethereal, camp-like outdoorsy-ness.
Add golden brown sugar, milk, cream, maple syrup, or raisins to complete the dish to your liking.
Over the years, it hasn’t always been easy finding the 28-oz. tin can of McCann’s steel-cut oatmeal; not all grocers carry it. And when they do, many charge too much.
These days, though, Trader Joe’s, which is growing ubiquitous across the country, carries this sensational oatmeal and I haven’t found anyone getting below Trader Joe’s price -- $4.99 a tin.
When it’s snowing, blowing, cold, rainy, gray, sleeting, hailing, or pitch black outside, who ya gonna call for comfort? Forget Ghostbusters! Call for McCann’s steel-cut Irish oatmeal – it’s the only way to survive winter’s bleakness!
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