Cooking with Coach Levi: My Personal Favorite Oatmeal Recipe

I love oatmeal. I cook it myself almost every single day. (The pre-made packets are alright, but they usually contain too much extra sugar.)

Nevertheless, oatmeal is a great breakfast. It’s full of healthy, hearty grains, and fills you up - it “sticks to your gut” as they say. In other words, it keeps you feeling satisfied for hours.

I typically go with a cinnamon raisin flavor. I enjoy it, and it never gets old. Roughly speaking, here are the ingredients:

• Large bowl
• 1 1/2 cups Rolled Oats
• 2 tsp Cinnamon
• 1 tsp Organic Cane Sugar (optional, to taste)
• 1/2 cup Raisins
• 1 1/2 cups Milk

And here is how to put it all together:

Step 1: Rolled Oats

Dump about 1 1/2 cups of rolled oats into your large bowl. I usually use the quick oats (which are ground a bit more and make for easier cooking,) but some people swear by steel cut oats. Use whatever you prefer.

Step 2: Cinnamon

Now pour in the cinnamon! Cinnamon is extremely healthy, so I just dump it on. I’d say I use about 2 tsp, although you only need about 1/4 tsp to get great health benefits.

Step 3: Sugar

I usually put a little bit of organic cane sugar in, too. 1 or 2 tsp is plenty.

Step 4: Stir

Now that all the dry ingredients are in, stir them up with your spoon.

Step 5: Raisins

Add in 1/2 cup raisins. (This is where the real sweetness comes from.)

Step 6: Stir again

Now stir the raisins in so all the ingredients are mixed nicely.

Step 7: Milk

Add milk. I add enough to cover the oatmeal and saturate it. In a big bowl like this, that is about 1 1/2 cups. (With more milk, the oatmeal will be thin and soupy. With less milk, the oatmeal is thick and sticky.)

You can use skim or 1% milk; both are good for creating a creamy texture. You could also use water, but I hate oatmeal made with water, since it tends to be thin, clumpy, and flavorless.

Step 8: Microwave

Now put the bowl in the microwave to cook. I usually put the bowl in for a minute, then take it out and stir it, and then microwave again for about 35 seconds. This keeps it from clumping up.

Cooking time will vary by microwave and by size of bowl. (My huge serving size requires extra cooking time!)

Step 9: Eat

Sit back, relax, and enjoy eating your bowl of oatmeal!

* My bowl of oatmeal is pretty darn big. If for some reason you’d rather not have a 1,000 calorie bowl of oatmeal, you can scale back the portion sizes as you prefer. But I usually eat at least 3,000 calories per day, so my breakfast is usually this size.