Overnight oats are a great option for a healthy, hearty, and nutritious breakfast. They’re also very practical and convenient, as you can make them the night before, ready to grab out of the fridge and enjoy without any prep or time lost. Because your overnight oats mix is pretty much a blank canvas, you can make them into a powerful protein booster.
Protein is very important for our bodies, being a building block for muscles, as well as aiding metabolism, and helping to keep blood sugar levels even. So, spooning a good portion of protein into your overnight oats is a great way to set up your day right. A super ingredient to use that brings a protein punch plus a creamy flavor to boot is cottage cheese. A half cup of cottage cheese contains around 14 grams of protein. If you break that down into a more realistic portion for your overnight oats, say 2 tablespoons, you’re getting around 5 grams of protein by adding cottage cheese.
There are only two standard ingredients that make up a basic overnight oats recipe: oats and milk. From there, you can build up your bowl or jar, whichever you decide to use, with all your favorite ingredients. If you’re on the protein train, add in chia seeds, which will give you 1 gram of protein per teaspoon, peanut butter, which offers 4 grams of protein, or some protein powder.
Protein plus added health benefits
You can work out your recommended daily serving of protein by taking each pound of body weight and multiplying it by 0.36 — that’s how many grams of protein you need per pound of body weight in a day. So if you weigh around 170 pounds, you’ll need about 61 grams of protein each day. You can easily get a good quarter to a third of that just in your overnight oats, especially if you double up on your cottage cheese.
The added benefit of cottage cheese is not just in the extra creaminess it will bring to your oats — it has other health benefits too. The cheese offers a good dose of calcium and phosphorus for bone health, it’s low in carbohydrates, which helps with blood sugar level management, and it generally contains probiotics, which are wonderful for gut health.
And because cottage cheese has quite a neutral flavor, you can bring its protein-packing punch to pretty much any mixture of flavors. Try this Strawberry Overnight Oats recipe with a couple of tablespoons of cottage cheese, or do the same with this Fall Fruit and Cocoa recipe. If you want to treat yourself to a little indulgence in the morning, Extra Decadent Chocolate Overnight Oats with creamy cottage cheese will have you feeling like you’re eating dessert instead of breakfast. For more inspiration on ingredient mixes, try a blend of these 19 that will give you different flavors to keep your overnight oats interesting.
