Porridge Pop-Up with Kristen Rasmussen
From polenta to congee, pretty much every culture has a porridge. Porridge is both the food of fairy tales and the food of peasants - in the best ways possible. There are so many methods to creating delicious, nourishing porridge. Below you’ll find some of my tips and a few recipes, but remember that porridge is incredibly forgiving and begs experimentation. Enjoy and, as always, stay hygge*!
Tips for getting your porridge on:
Any grain can be “porridged” - think beyond oats. Rice (aka congee), corn (aka polenta), kasha (aka toasted buckwheat), øllebrød (rye bread/beer), and the list goes on. Just cook grains as you normally would (heartier grains like barley take longer, whereas refined/smaller grains like rice are faster), but add more water/broth/other liquid and stir more often. Once you figure out how much water is needed for your ideal porridge, you can add it all at once.
Porridge can be sweet or savory - there’s no rules! It’s a blank slate!
It can be nice to toast your grains before cooking the porridge either in a pan on the stovetop or a cookie tray in the oven (I like to do this for buckwheat and millet especially).
I like to cook many of my porridges overnight in a slow cooker, especially when making larger quantities - I like the texture that results from this process, but it’s all about testing different methods. A pressure cooker works for coarser grains to in a pinch!
If the texture isn’t to your liking, don’t give up! Try adding other ingredients like flavorful fats, blended fruit or winter squash, or broth.
The problem with most porridge you find in the U.S. (aka sad oatmeal) is that there’s no love in it - add some flavor with spices, miso, herbs, butter, cheese, roasted vegetables, etc. and please - I can’t stress this enough - ADD CRUNCHY BITS. Savory ideas - crispy shallots, bacon, toasted hazelnuts/sunflower seeds/etc., furikake, seaweed, chicken skin…Sweet ideas - toasted nuts/seeds yet again, cacao nibs, candied orange peel…
Any leftover porridge can be reheated another time or used in bread baking or made into pancakes (just add egg/water and cook as you would normal pancakes! Savory or sweet - both are great).
Recipes
Remember that these are completely adaptable for what suits your fancy/what you have on hand - feel free to replace ingredients with others, leave things out, or use a different grain.
Savory millet porridge with seared radish, tamari greens, and crispy shallot
Serves 4.
Porridge
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons dry millet
1 cup chicken or vegetable stock
3-4 cups water
1 bay leaf
Up to 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt, divided
1/4 teaspoon white pepper, plus more to taste
2 tablespoons shallot oil (or grapeseed or canola oil, if not making crispy shallots)
1 tablespoon tamari
1 tablespoon grapeseed or canola oil, divided
4 radishes or tokyo turnips or radishes, preferably with leaves attached, halved
4 cups chopped leafy greens, such as dandelion, mustard, kale, or chard
1-1/2 tablespoons crispy shallots (optional, recipe below)
4 soft-cooked eggs (recipe below), peeled and carefully halved
Nasturtium flowers or other edible flowers for garnish (optional)
In a medium to large saucepan over medium heat, toast the millet until fragrant, about 2 minutes, then rinse. Remove 2 tablespoons of millet and set aside. Add remaining millet back to the pot.
Add the stock, 3 cups of water, and the bay leaf to the pot and bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and cook for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove the bay leaf and cook for another 5 to 10 minutes, adding more liquid as needed. Stir in 1/4 teaspoon salt, 1/4 teaspoon white pepper, and reserved toasted millet. Keep warm until ready to serve. Note: Porridge can also be made in a slow cooker/crockpot by cooking grain and liquid overnight on the lowest setting.
While the porridge cooks, prepare the tamari oil, greens, and radish. Tamari oil: Blend 2 tablespoons shallot oil with 1 tablespoon tamari and a pinch of salt. Set aside. More tamari oil will be made than needed and can be held up to 1 month in the refrigerator.
Radish: Heat 1-1/2 teaspoons grapeseed oil in a large sauté pan over medium-high heat. When the pan is hot, place the radishes cut side down and sear until slightly browned, then flip and cook another minute on the other side. (Try to keep the radish leaves off the pan until the end of cooking so they just slightly wilt.) Transfer the radishes to a plate and sprinkle with salt. Greens: In the same pan, reduce heat to medium and add the remaining 1 tablespoon of oil, followed by the leafy greens and a splash of water. Cook until wilted and toss with a drizzle of the reserved tamari oil.
To serve: Place a mound of greens in each serving bowl and ladle on 1 cup of porridge. Top with halved egg and the seared radish halves. Drizzle the top with more tamari oil and garnish with the crispy shallots and nasturtium flowers, if using.
Soft-cooked eggs: Bring a pot of water large enough to hold eggs to a boil then reduce to a simmer. Add eggs and cook for exactly 7 minutes. Transfer eggs to ice water bath for at least 2 minutes then keep at room temperature until used.
Crispy shallots (optional, but delicious)
Makes 1/3 cup crispy shallots and 1/4 cup shallot oil. There will be extra - shallots keep for up to 1 week and shallot oil for up to 6 months refrigerated.
1/3 cup grapeseed or canola oil
1 large shallot, very thinly sliced
Kosher salt to taste
Place the oil in a small saute pan and heat over medium heat. Add the shallot slices in a single layer and cook until golden brown, stirring occasionally. Remove the shallots, let cool on paper towels and sprinkle with salt. Set aside.
Substitution possibility notes:
Other whole grains, such as steel-cut oats, brown rice, buckwheat, or quinoa. For grains that cannot be eaten toasted, such as brown rice, cook the additional 2 tablespoons of grain in the liquid rather than adding them at the end (step X). Leftover, precooked grains can also be used for porridge by decreasing the stock and water content in half and adding more liquid as needed. For all grains, keep an eye on water level and add more liquid, grain, or time, as needed to create desired porridge consistency.
Tokyo turnips are a type of salad turnip. They are much smaller and juicier than a traditional turnip and can be eaten raw.
This is a great opportunity to use leftover protein from a previous meal - pulled chicken is classic on porridge (drizzle any remaining chicken juices into or on top of porridge as well!), but other cooked meats, beans, tofu, or seared fish would also work.
Sweet Cardamom Porridge with Berry and Toasted Bits
Serves 6-8.
2 cups steel cut oats or other grain/grain mix (I use a mix of 6 different grains including heirloom grains like kamut and amaranth, but oats are delicious in this application as well)
6-8 cups water (can substitute some water with milk of choice)
2-4 tablespoons brown sugar
3-5 whole cardamom pods, crushed
Salt to taste
Toppings (see ideas below)
Heat oats with 6 cups water, 2 tablespoons brown sugar, and 3 crushed cardamom pods until simmering. Cook, stirring occasionally, until a thick porridge (about 20 minutes). Add more liquid, brown sugar, cardamom, and salt until your desired texture is achieved.
Serve hot with a selection of toppings (see below - mandatory to have toppings).
Topping ideas
Pop-up combo: Almond-cardamom crisp, elderberry syrup, yogurt drizzle, bay nut dust.
Berries/other fresh fruit
Roasted fruit (in the summer, I like to roast peaches and nectarines, in the spring I like to roast rhubarb tossed in brown sugar)
Berry or other syrups (I used elderberry syrup that I foraged/made at the pop-up)
Crispy granola (I made an almond-cardamom crisp for the pop-up)
Toasted nuts: Hazelnuts, almonds, walnuts…
Toasted seeds: Sesame, flax, sunflower…
Yogurt/kefir/buttermilk/cream
Sea salt
Dusting of cinnamon/other warm spice
Shaved chocolate
All recipes courtesy of Kristen Rasmussen. Learn more about her culinary adventures at Rooted Food, or follow her on Instagram @rootedfood.
