My Chinese Kitchen: The Crockpot

{Note: Too much time in the Chinese kitchen this week, so Hold the MSG will post tomorrow instead.}

As I mentioned in another post earlier this week, life in China has some challenges. Things take a little longer to accomplish. We use public transit, there are crowds just about everywhere, and we’re just not in Kansas anymore, Dorothy–or Toronto, for that matter.

I’ve been experimenting with gluten-free baking here. I think I just about have a handle on it (victory report forthcoming). We also have a historical issue with oatmeal. In the supermarket, it’s possible to buy instant and quick-cook oats, but I’ve never been a fan. In the market, you can by large flake oats, but they’re thicker than we’re used to, and the texture is chewier–like eating quinoa–which would be fine if it were quinoa, but it’s not. It’s oats, and we don’t like our oats chewy.

When we first came to China back in 2008, I brought along my grain mill. At the time, we were already eating flours with less gluten, like spelt. I brought a significant quantity of spelt groats with me (so they’d stay fresher than pre-ground flour) and used the mill I had bought back home to grind them.

We discovered this week that buying oat groats and grinding them makes a lovely consistency of oatmeal that everyone’s happy with. They’re not like steel-cut or rolled, so I don’t know what to call them exactly, but we’re happy with them.

But that’s just an example of something that takes a little bit longer here. There’s also the dishwasher. It takes a little longer here too.

All of that to say, I’m always looking for kitchen shortcuts, like my Deluxe Crockpot Oatmeal. I originally found this recipe at A Year of Slow Cooking. Stephanie O’Dea who blogged and cooked in her crockpot for an entire year AND cooked gluten-free was a source of inspiration, and I looked forward to her every post.

I can’t find this recipe on her site anymore, but I’ll include it below. I made some adjustments to the original because it called for the oats to be cooked overnight, but what I found was that they cooked in about half the time, so if you truly put them on when you went to bed and you went to bed at a decent hour, you’d have partially burnt oats the next morning. I remedied this situation by setting an alarm for the middle of the night and turning on the crockpot. But really. Who else but me is going to do such a crazy thing?

Since returning (and perfecting my oat-grinding), I found the perfect way to make them “just right.” (I feel like Goldilocks.) I cook them for an hour on the high setting prior to going to bed and turn them down to “keep warm” overnight. Perfection!

Except if you forget to turn them down.

Which is precisely what happened to me last week, and which is the real reason for this post. My poor crockpot was toast. Burnt toast. Layers and layers of it. There was a solid, stuck-on mass of charcoal in the bottom of the pot and I thought I’d NEVER get it out.

But then I discovered this amazing solution. I am huge believer in baking soda and vinegar. They clean anything. If vinegar won’t do it, baking soda will. Vinegar for mirrors, baking soda to scrub the scum out of bathtubs. You can even use baking soda for laundry detergent and vinegar as a softener. Really. Love the stuff. Perfectly natural, things smell and look clean afterwards, with no heavy smells of chemicals.

But now I’m even more impressed with the power of baking soda. I turned my poor crockpot on and added my faithful baking soda (which is good for a post all on its own, don’t you think? I brought this home from the store and was already using it before I discovered something was not quite right…)

I let the crockpot come to a boil then turned it down and let it simmer overnight. This is the result. Nothing short of amazing! All the burned-on charcoaly stuff just peeled off, leaving my lovely crockpot behind, just like new.

And now I can make my oatmeal again:

Deluxe Crockpot Oatmeal

• 1 cup oats
• 2 cup milk
• ¼ cup honey (or less, to taste)
• 1 tablespoon butter – melted
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• ½ teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 cup finely chopped apple
• ½ cup raisins and/or dates
• ½ cup chopped walnuts or almonds (I omit these–not everyone in our family is a nut fan)

Grease the inside of Crockpot. Throw all ingredients inside Crockpot and mix well. Cook for one hour on high and turn to keep warm overnight. Stir before serving. Enjoy! (And don’t forget to turn it down overnight.)