Banana Nut Steel-Cut Oats
To conclude the 6 Weeks of Oats event, I thought I’d share what I thought of as being the ultimate form of the classic bowl of oatmeal. I wanted to bring out all the best features of a bowl of oatmeal. The creaminess, the coziness, and the comfort. Truthfully, what makes oats so plain and boring most of the time is the lack of time and care that’s put into them.
While I know that 15 minutes of cook-time for a bowl of oatmeal is asking a lot from those of you who have gotten used to the ease of quick oats, steel-cut oats are more than worth it. What’s even better, the 15 minutes start almost as soon as you choose to make these. Throw the oats on the stove and use the rest of the time to make your coffee and prep whatever toppings you’d like to go on top of your bowl of oatmeal.
For the ultimate oatmeal recipe I had to figure out a few components: nutritional value, ease, flavor, and texture. The usual bowl of oatmeal generally consists of oats, milk or water, some fruit, and maple syrup or honey. The most common choice of oats being rolled oats, because of its lower cook-time and versatile nature. As for the fruit, people seem to generally like to top their oats with bananas, berries, or both. It’s classic, it’s good, nothing wrong with it. High fiber breakfast with lots of micronutrients from the fruit. It could be better, though. I wanted to add protein and fats to this classic and use steel-cut oats, which is better for your blood sugar.
I don’t love protein powders, they’re usually very heavily sweetened and flavored and I don’t like the restriction that comes with that. So, normally, I use collagen powder as my choice of protein powder. Not for this recipe, though. Eggs are accessible, affordable, and very high in protein. Plus, you can’t taste them at all in this recipe! We’re only using egg whites in this recipe, but you can save your yolks for some fried rice, Crème Brûlée, hollandaise sauce, and you can even try out the viral salt-cured egg yolks everyone’s grating on top of their pastas.
So, with the egg whites, this recipe becomes a lot more satiating and balanced. The egg whites also add to the creaminess of the oats, but they don’t do much in terms of flavor. The breakfast combo that stood out to me the most from my childhood, whether it was on top of my cereal, my pancakes, or my bread, was always bananas, nuts, and honey or maple syrup (honey for most things, maple syrup for pancakes). Nuts also have the added benefit of providing healthy fats in this recipe.
Creamy Banana-Nut Protein Oats
Ingredients
Instructions
Notes
- To make these oats vegan, substitute the egg whites for your favorite plant-based protein powder.
- You can make the caramelized banana with or without the coconut sugar, but it's important to use a ripe banana if you choose not to add any sugar.
- The ripeness of your bananas will also determine how sweet the oats turn out, if needed, add in honey or maple syrup at the end to sweeten them to your liking.
Nutrition Facts
Calories
493.78Fat
20.16Sat. Fat
4.83Carbs
62.32Fiber
9.12Net carbs
53.22Sugar
21.13Protein
20.59Sodium
117.72Cholesterol
178.32