hey guys retired at 40 today we're doubling down because we're doing
instant pot hot apple pie oatmeal and then we're gonna freeze dry it so I feel
like I'm always on this never-ending quest
to find inexpensive recipes that I can make quickly usually in the instant pot
or on the grill or something like that and there's something that I can throw
into the freeze dryer my other requirement is that I want to be a large
quantity of whatever I'm making because I want it to be a worthwhile for all the
work that I'm putting in and all of those requirements are met and today's
recipe hot up with pie oatmeal with that being said if you have a good recipe for
me to try leave it down in the comments section so here's what we need for the
recipe first we need steel-cut oats and yes they have to be steel-cut oats or it
will not turn out the same second we need some almond or soy milk and you
guessed it this is homemade I'll have the video coming up on that pretty soon
then we need some water we need some raisins or some kind of
dried fruit if you're a freeze dryer you know you've got all kinds of this stuff
laying around I'm gonna do cranberries today this actually is an optional thing
because this is an apple oatmeal it has lots and lots of flavor
even without the extra fruit but you can do all kinds of different stuff raisins
cranberries bananas strawberries really anything you want
then you need three large apples I'm gonna do a gala Apple a Honey Crisp
apple and a green apple and then for spices we need some cinnamon some nutmeg
some vanilla and some ground ginger if you've ever watched any of my instant
pot recipes you know that I love the instant pot because it's really fast and
it's usually just a handful of ingredients and this is no exception so
what makes this one really easy is everything just goes in there there's no
prep there's no nothing so we're gonna start off with a cup and a half of water
and then we're gonna do 1 cup of the steel oats and I want to show you the
difference between steel oats and the regular oats that you're used to so it
almost looks like oatmeal that has been thrown into a blender it's just a little
bit finer but the texture is always a whole lot different and I like them a
lot better so into the instant pot with 1 cup of steel
and then we're gonna do a cup and a half of our almond milk or soy milk or you
can use regular skim milk or whole milk or anything any any other kind of milk
also if you want to alright next up we need our three apples and you know me
I'm always trying to show off my kitchen gadgets this is an apple corer we use
this a lot for when we're making apple cider and when we pick all of the apples
off of the apple tree but it takes all the skin off and then it cores it at the
same time takes the core out and it gives you this little coily thing I'll
put a link in the description for where you can pick one of these up so you got
three cord apples and the cool thing about this then you can just take a
knife cut them twice and you've got all your Apple chunks good for freeze-drying
also okay now into the instant pot with the apples next we're gonna do our
quarter of a cup of cranberries raisins any kind of freeze-dried fruit really
anything that's going to add flavor but once again you don't actually need the
fruit the Apple is actually really good just by itself so here's where a big
punch of flavor comes in we're gonna do a teaspoon and a half of cinnamon we're
gonna do 1/2 a teaspoon of ginger 1/2 a teaspoon of nutmeg
and then one teaspoon of vanilla look at all that deliciousness and it smells
really good too already so just give it a real quick mix to stir up the
ingredients before we throw our lid on
you've never been another channel before I just want to take a moment to welcome
you we do some cooking we do some food preservation we do some grilling we do
some self sustaining the living and you get to journey with me and my family on
our retirement at the age of 40 so if you like the content we provide click
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while you're there give us a thumbs up and throw us a comment in the comment
section in the meantime let's get back to the recipe so you want to go to
manual and you want high pressure and then we're gonna do 4 minutes
and when you're 4 minutes is up you're gonna let this naturally release now
what I'm really curious about is how this is gonna freeze dry as it turns out
I've never actually done oat meal before but I have done several there
breakfast things and I've done several other things that have the same
consistency as oatmeal so I've got a feeling it's gonna be really really good
also if your instant pot runs a little hot like mine does mine tends to burn
things you can also adjust it and go down to medium or low you might have to
add just a little bit of time or you can just open your lid and stir it every
couple minutes all right it smells wonderful in here and now it's time to
load up our freeze dryer trays I'll tell you what would go really good with this
is my traeger granola I made a holiday granola a while back and it would just
be awesome to top this oatmeal with that granola alright so I can already tell
you obviously this is not even gonna be close to enough to fill in my trays but
it does look like one batch fills one tray almost perfect if you just spread
it out it's just to the top of the tray so I'm gonna go ahead make three more
batches of this alright let's check and see how this is doing I actually tripled
up the recipe and it looks like it actually did just fine I added a couple
more minutes on it and then I just let it hang out for a little bit longer and
didn't burn this time
oh the Quaker Oats guy has got nothing on us today check those things out this
look smell and taste awesome let's go take them out to the Deep Freeze well it
looks like everything's done let's take it down to the freeze dryer so I'm not
sure if our oatmeal got completely frozen so I'm gonna do a final dry of
nine hours all right we'll see you guys in a bit
so the oatmeal has really caught me off guard I had every intention on having
this video out Friday for freeze dried Friday like I usually do it's been about
37 hours and eight minutes now and I've still got an hour and 48 minutes left so
the oatmeal is really taking a lot longer than I thought it was it usually
it's something like that usually only takes about 24 hours sometimes 20 hours
but by the time it's all said and done we're looking at almost 40 hours but
we've got no choice but to keep drying
all right we're finally done it took us 38 hours and 57 minutes and I got to
tell you that's a lot longer than I thought it was going to be I don't know
why it took so long it possibly could have been that it wasn't all the way
frozen I had it in the deep freeze probably eight or out eight hours or
more which I figured it would be plenty but let's see how it turned out let's
take these up to the kitchen and have a closer look
okay so first impressions it looks really really good it's exactly how you
want it to be it's that super super dry consistency everything looks really good
I've got a feeling this is going to rehydrate exactly the way you want it to
be in fact I don't think you'll even be able to tell that it was it was freeze
dried and then rehydrated this stuff tastes really good even in its dry form
it's kind of similar to granola it also tastes a lot like hot apple pie
alright so I've got a little bit saved in some ball jars so we can rehydrate it
and a little bit that I'll vacuum seal in the harvest right just because I
like to see the difference the rest is gonna go in a mylar bag and I'm gonna go
into a mylar because I'm gonna use this for camping this is a great camping
breakfast because it's super easy you just boil some water throw it on there
and you're good to go I also think that you'd be fine if you smash this down
pretty good
so another little idea for you I like to put my oxygen absorbers into a little
ball jar like this and then I vacuum seal it after I use it every time I
vacuum seal it in the harvest right and then it pulls all of the oxygen out of
it makes the oxygen sealers last for a lot longer because as you know if you
leave the oxygen absorbers exposed to the air for about 15 to 20 minutes
they're no good anymore so I like to have them open as little as possible
I also triple seal my bags because I don't trust mylar as much as a ball jar
because you can't see what's going on inside of it so I like to be better safe
than sorry and since we're doing apples another thing that I like to do if I'm
doing just plain apples I like to sprinkle some cinnamon on them and you
kind of get the same flavor as what you get into the in the oatmeal like this
the apples are very sweet on their own but if you put a little cinnamon on
there it really just gives them a an added little bonus makes a great snack
okay so to reconstitute it's simple enough it's hot water and some
freeze-dried oatmeal
probably one of the easiest things that I've ever reconstituted it's a it's
exactly like instant oatmeal except for it's homemade and you can tell the
difference the only thing that I would do different next time
I think if you smashed it up before you put it into a ball jar or into a mylar
bag it would actually help reconstitute a little faster you wouldn't have to
stir it as much and it would be a little bit more compact to store I think that
oatmeal meets all of my qualifications you can make a whole bunch of it an
instant pot and then go into the freeze dryer fill up all of your trays and you
have a whole lot of food that's inexpensive and it's worthwhile when
you're done and also feel free to share your recipes or suggestions you'd like
to see for videos especially if it meets my qualifications well this is retired
before do you remember live life simple we'll catch you next week