Ever since I saw Alton do it on “Good Eats” a few years ago, I’ve wanted to try making oatmeal overnight in the slow cooker. Yesterday I got around to buying some steel-cut oats (you must use steel-cut oats, not rolled oats, for this), and looked up some recipes.

I ended up doing a blend of Alton’s recipe and this one, which involves cooking the oatmeal in a bowl inside the water-filled slow cooker crock, using a double-boiler kind of setup. I like to use at least half milk when I make oatmeal (especially now that Griff eats it with us), but I wasn’t sure how safe that would be in this overnight setup. Alton uses a half cup of half & half in his recipe, so I figured using 1 cup of whole milk and 3 cups of water would be ok. I also threw in a diced apple, about 1/2 cup of raisins, and around 1/3 cup of dark brown sugar. Oh, and some sprinkles of cinnamon and nutmeg. I used a Pyrex bowl and filled the crock with enough hot tap water to come a little above the level of the bowl contents. We set it on LOW at 9pm and just let it go til breakfast, around 10 hours later.

Here’s how it looked when I opened the lid this morning.

And here it is in my breakfast bowl.

I think it turned out great! It’s a very smooth porridge consistency, so if you prefer your steel-cut oats chewy, stick with the stovetop. For a weekday breakfast, you cannot beat the convenience. Cleanup was very easy, too, since you just have to clean out the bowl, not the big heavy crock.

If I made any changes, I would probably decrease the total liquid to 3.5 cups to make the oatmeal thicker, and then I could add extra milk without making it too runny. There are plenty of leftovers, and those will thicken in the fridge and make it necessary to add milk to thin them out, which is fine with me! I actually think oatmeal tastes better the second day, but I’m weird like that. I might also sub in apple juice or cider for some of the water for a stronger apple taste.