This breakfast dish comes to us courtesy of our slow cooker, and all you need are the steel cut oats, some coconut milk and the fruit.

Man, we love cereal. Jon like Cheerios, and I love Lucky Charms. We’ve also realized some of our choices are chock full of sugar. Both of us decided to try our hardest to find something we could both enjoy that wasn’t too sugary.

Enter the steel cut oats with our favourite fruits. This time around, we chose apples, but we’ve also made this with peaches.

Jon actually discovered these kinds of oats in cooking school.

“We were going over grains in Diet and Nutrition…and [the steel cut oats] came up briefly. I filed it away as something interesting, but not something I’d be able to prepare at home.”

That’s because for the best results, he says these kinds of oats should be cooked in a slow cooker.

“I never thought I’d use a slow cooker for a breakfast food.”

Slow cookers, also known as “Crock-pots” (thank you, marketing) allow people to cook meals at a slower speed and at varying temperatures, mostly without supervision. These days, I don’t know how I lived without a slow cooker, and I think everyone should have one! I’ve made everything from chilli to rice dishes — and now steel cut oats with it. Most of the things we’ve made take no more than seven hours to cook, and preparations for many of the recipes we’ve tried average about an hour, usually less.

Slow cookers are also fantastic for big family meals, especially in this day and age where we’re constantly hustling. Our recipe for steel cut oats and fruit is stupid easy, you can cook it overnight, and you can add most fruits to the recipe. By the time it’s all done, it’s ready for the morning! It’s filling, tasty, and the yield can feed you for upwards of five days. And don’t worry, you can find steel cut oats at most grocery stores. We purchased ours at our local Superstore from the bulk section.

Says Jon of this recipe, “it’s overall more healthy than your run-of-the-mill rolled oats. More fibre, more protein, less processed overall. Better texture in my opinion, as well.”

Our recipe makes about ten one-cup servings.

What you’ll need

• 6 apples of your choice, chopped
• 2 cups of dried steel cut oats
• 3 cups coconut milk (we used milk substitute coconut milk — not the stuff in the can. I’m lactose intolerant, but you can sub in whatever milk you like, whether that’s 2% milk or almond milk.)
• 3 cups of water
• 1 tablespoon of salt
• Cinnamon to taste (you can add any other spices you might like!)
• Sugar to taste, though we didn’t add any

How to cook it

Step one: put all the ingredients in a slow cooker, in no particular order. The only thing you’ll need to have done ahead of everything going into the slow cooker is chop up the apples (or whatever fruit you like) into bite-sized pieces.

Step two: cook on medium heat for six hours. Do not open the slow cooker while it’s doing it’s thing! You’re basically going to let it do the work for you.

Step three: seven hours later…it should be ready to go. Give it some time to cool (we like to wait about 15 – 20 minutes) and then…breakfast is served!

Be sure to tweet at us if you try the recipe! Click here to tweet at me, and click here to tweet at Jon!