Oatmeal is a quick, easy, hearty, and healthy breakfast, but there are some mistakes everyone makes with oatmeal, including not using the right bowl to eat oatmeal (something deep with less surface area is ideal so that it doesn’t instantly cool when it hits the bowl). And the flavors can go beyond just apple and cinnamon, with some amazing secret ingredients like bacon effortlessly elevating even the blandest oatmeal. Still, buying oats at the grocery store can be confusing. Like, what’s the difference between old-fashioned oats and rolled oats? Well, they’re actually the same.
Let’s start with the oat groat, the whole seed of the oat plant (Avena sativa) whose husk has already been stripped from it. Groats are ground into oat flour or flattened into oatmeal. They’re called rolled oats because they’re steamed and then crushed and flattened with an oat roller (sometimes called an oat flaker, grain flaker, or grain roller). The result is a flat grain with a lot of surface area that can be easily dried to remove moisture. Rolled oats are also called old-fashioned oats because it’s a traditional — old — form of processing them. Not only does the large surface area allow them to be dried quicker, but because more moisture is removed and the natural oils stabilized, it also makes them last longer on the shelf, and, ultimately, cook quickly in hot water. So, your stovetop oatmeal can be ready in just about five minutes.
Oatmeal 201: rolled vs. instant vs. steel-cut oats
Because of the larger surface area, rolled or old-fashioned oats are also perfect in delicious, chewy oatmeal cookies and overnight oats. They just soak up more moisture and do it relatively quickly. Furthermore, the large, flat oats are more easily imparted with flavor. While oats were probably eaten by humans more than 30,000 years ago, they were hand-ground until the groat-cutting machine was invented in 1877, bringing easy-to-prepare rolled oats to American tables.
Quick, or instant, oats are similar to rolled oats but are processed more thoroughly. But processed doesn’t mean that they’re unhealthy or have chemicals involved; they’re simply steamed longer and rolled into flatter, thinner pieces so that they have even more surface area by weight. That’s why instant oats can be cooked in just 1 to 2 minutes or turned into oatmeal in a cup or bowl of boiling water so quickly. That said, they aren’t ideal for baking because they can turn into mush rather quickly.
Steel-cut oats, on the other hand, are the least processed of the three, with each groat cut into two or three pieces with a steel blade. This is why steel-cut oats need longer to cook and end up with a chewier texture. While steel-cut oats retain a bit more fiber, there isn’t really much difference in nutritional value among the three oats.
If you’re ready to steam forward with some oats, check out Duff Goldman’s pro tip for baking delicious oatmeal raisin cookies.
