After years of loathing oatmeal, I’ve grown to enjoy it. For over a year I’ve tasked myself with finding numerous ways to improve the cereal grain, like adding sausage and pickles to it, cooking it in your morning tea, or baking it into PB&J bars, and it actually worked. My oat experience has indeed improved, and I get genuinely excited about the next tasty experiment. For this trial, I focused on speed, and streamlined my breakfast by poaching my egg directly in a pot of oatmeal.
I’ll just go ahead and say it: Savory oatmeal is the better oatmeal. I nearly always want a savory breakfast, and boiled groats don’t have a chance in hell of making me happy unless they’re paired with some salty stuff. Eggs are going in. Usually, I’ll make a steamed egg in another pot, or fry an egg separately, but that requires keeping an eye on two things, dirtying another piece of cookware, more utensils, and extra time. This technique cuts out the fuss, and keeps it all in one pot.
Boiling is usually the culprit of bland food, but in this case the cooking method offers an easy option for poaching. For a single serving, set 1 cup of water in a small pot to boil, with a 1/2 cup of old-fashioned oats ready on deck. Once the water for your oatmeal is boiling, add the oats and a heavy pinch of salt. Boil for two minutes on medium heat, then lower the heat to a gentle simmer.
Crack a fridge-cold egg into the pot and loosely cover. Oats are starchy and, like potatoes and pasta, have a tendency to boil over if you cover them completely. Tilt or crack the lid so it’s mostly covered, but there’s a space for steam to escape. This allows the top of the egg to cook while preventing a stovetop mess.
For small batches of oatmeal, I prefer a small pot. Here are some options:
Allow the oats and egg to cook like this for another two to five minutes, depending on how set you like your yolk. If you like a hard yolk, you may need to add another tablespoon of water toward the end to prevent the bottom from burning. You can also turn off the burner after five minutes, leave it on the hot element and cover the pot completely. The residual heat takes care of business in about five minutes.
I let my poached egg and oats cook for three minutes so the egg white had completely set, the yolk was runny, and the water had completely evaporated. Complete the dish with other savory accouterments. I used sweet, buttered corn, spinach, and garlicky sambal, but you can add olives, bacon, mushrooms, or some of last night’s leftovers.
