Money Saving Meals

Oats

What we recommend is a bit of thinking beyond the steaming hot porridge or crunchy muesli square. With their pleasing texture and mild flavour, you can enjoy oats throughout the day in numerous tasty ways that will be good for your wallet and wellbeing.

Shop smart

As with many processed foods - the more the manufacturer transforms a staple food into a convenience food, the more you pay. Look at the savings you can make when you opt for traditional oats for your morning porridge over those single serve sachets.

• If you buy the single serve sachets of instant oats (usually 8-10 sachets per packet) you pay from 33 cents to 69 cents per bowl of porridge.
• Whereas, if you buy traditional rolled oats you pay from around 4 cents per serve for a bowl of generic oats, to 11 cent to 22 cents for branded oats.

So, if a family of four likes a bowl of porridge to fuel the day in winter, it would cost them about $15 to stock the pantry with traditional generic oats and about $180 if they bought instant oats. We took the average (50 cents a sachet) of the four instant brands. The savings just over the three months of winter (around $165) would really help with those school shoes and excursions!

Cook smart

• Traditional rolled oats or old-fashioned oatmeal are flakes made from whole kernels that have been steamed, rolled and flattened. Use them for porridge (they take about 3 to 5 minutes to cook), raw in muesli (or toasted) and added to biscuits, slices, banana, date or fruit loaf etc. flapjacks, crispy toppings, chewy bottom crusts, stuffings , crunchy toppings on pasta bakes, best of all on fruit crumbles. You can also buy quick-cooking oats that are made the same way as traditional rolled oats but are more refined and cook in around a minute to make a creamy porridge.
  
• Instant oats are pre-cooked so the manufacturer has done the hard work for you. They are usually sold in single serve sachets (sometimes flavoured). You saw above in ‘shop smart' how much you pay for the convenience of basically adding boiling water and serving.
  
• Oat bran is made from the outer layer of the kernel that's just under the hull. It is a soft, bland product (so a good mixer) useful as an addition to breakfast cereals and as a partial substitution for flour in baked goods to boost fibre. You can also add a tablespoon or two to meatball and burger mixes, use it in making muesli or add to porridge, add a tablespoon or 2 to muffins, add some to breadcrumbs when crumbing. Look for it in the breakfast section of the supermarket.
  
• Whole oats (groats/kernels) are exactly what they say. You will have to hunt them down in health food stores rather than supermarkets. They take about 45 minutes to cook and have a chewy texture. Try them instead of brown rice or barley for a pilaf.
  
• Steelcut oats (or Scotch oats) are whole kernels chopped into pieces with steel blades. Again they are more likely to be on the shelves of health food stores. But check out larger supermarkets. They take about 30 minutes to cook to a dense chewy porridge and can be used for sturdy fare like oatcakes.

Eat smart

There's probably no need to rave about the virtues of oats. Because muesli, granola and porridge are such popular breakfast foods, it's highly likely that for most of us, oats are the most commonly eaten whole grain food we tuck into. Oats are higher in protein than wheat and are rich in B vitamins. Their main claim to fame is that they contain plenty of soluble and insoluble fibre - their soluble fibre that helps lower cholesterol and the insoluble that keeps us regular.

Been shocked at the cost of supermarket mueslis? Try Diane's recipes, Muesli Slice and Diane's Home-Made Toasted Muesli.