Welcome to another edition of Dr. Greger in the Kitchen.
"Dr. Greger in the Kitchen: Groatnola"
Today, we're going to be making “groatnola,”
which arose out of my frustration
with finding a healthy breakfast cereal.
This is an SOS-free recipe with no added salt, oil, or sugar,
which is hard to find in the grocery store.
There’s two last time I checked;
one’s called Uncle Sam's cereal,
which is toasted,
flattened wheat berries and flaxseeds.
You get a little box; it’s expensive.
And then, there's some brands of muesli
which don't have any crap added,
but I always find muesli kind of mushy.
I love the breakfast cereal from my youth
but just don't want all that added garbage.
So, how about groatnola?
Groats, of course,
starting out with whole, intact grains,
not just groats.
Although, we're actually not using a grain today at all,
but buckwheat groats.
Buckwheat, despite its name,
has nothing to do with wheat; it’s not even a grain.
It's a starchy seed of a non- grass plant-family...plant.
So, we're going to start by making these raw groats.
We're going to cook a cup of them.
If you have an Instant Pot,
it’s one cup of buckwheat groats
to a cup and a half of water, pressure cooked for five minutes.
I don’t have an Instant Pot here,
so we're just going to cook it on the stove,
but it only takes ten minutes.
Then, we are going to nuke a sweet potato—
a nice big, juicy, round sweet potato.
We're going to microwave it.
It depends on your microwave… five minutes to ten minutes
until it's nice and juicy and delicious inside.
And...we'll be right back.
And while we wait…
ah, ten minutes is too much for burpees.
So, I’m sorry, no burpees this time.
And we are back. Buckwheat is done.
Throw that in a big mixing bowl.
We have our sweet potato. Look at that beautiful color there.
Don’t burn yourself.
And then, use a potato masher
or one of those zigzag wire ones is a little easier,
just to mash this together—
the cooked buckwheat and the cooked sweet potato—
until it all becomes nice and homogeneous.
Okay, and then, we are going to put a teaspoon
of pumpkin pie spice
and a teaspoon of just plain cinnamon.
It's already smelling good.
And then, we are going to add 12 cups of rolled oats.
If you like big chunks,
you can add less of the rolled oats
and if you like it more like little crunchy bits,
you can add more.
Now, if you have dogs at home,
what I would do is wait to put the spices in until the end,
and so then, you just have the three ingredients—
the sweet potato, oats, and buckwheat,
and you can roll them into little balls,
and all four of my dogs love them.
Unfortunately, I don’t have any of my dogs here,
so I just added the spices early,
which makes it a little more evenly distributed
throughout the mix.
So, you just want to mix this until it's down to little clumps.
Now, this is going to make about
three cookie trays worth of groatnola.
I like making a whole big batch;
so, this is one sweet potato’s worth of groatnola.
Okay, see, it's this kind of chunky texture
that you might see with regular granola.
Then, take a cookie tray
and put about a third of it in there,
and basically, you want kind of a single layer.
Kinda smush it down.
And then, put it in the oven at a low temperature:
250°F for two and a half hours.
If you have a convection setting and can get some air circulating,
that’s even better, but optional.
I put that in, and I have a tray that's already done.
Alright, here's the finished batch.
As you can see it's all light, crispy, medium chunky.
It has the sweetness from the sweet potato;
it has the intact groats from the buckwheat,
the oat goodness.
And then, do whatever you want to do
in terms of granola.
You can put it on a smoothie bowl,
sprinkle it on some frozen banana soft-serve ice cream
that you make in a blender or something.
I just treat it like regular breakfast cereal.
So, I have a groatnola base with some berries,
some pumpkin seeds, some walnuts,
and then, some cocoa powder,
just because I like everything chocolatey.
Put some unsweetened soy milk on there,
and you are good to go.
You will have weeks of groatnola to enjoy.
Would you like some recipes?
Go to the NutritionFacts.org recipe page,
where you will find recipes
where not just every recipe is health-promoting,
but every ingredient of every recipe is health-promoting—
a green light food, a whole plant food.
So, wait a second,
how do you make stuff sweet without sugar?
How do you make stuff salty without salt?
Those are some of the challenges that we took on
to bring you healthy recipes
at the NutritionFacts.org recipe page.
Sweet potatoes are one of my favorite go-to travel snacks.
You will see me on airplanes
whipping out my microwaved sweet potato.
They make perfect hand warmers.
I went to medical school in chilly Boston.
During the winter,
microwaved two sweet potatoes in the morning,
put them in my jacket pockets
to keep my hands nice and warm,
and then a perfect, healthy snack for later on.
Yeah, I love sweet potatoes.