Oatmeal, or porridge, is a wonderful way to start the day. And soaking your oats the night before you cook them can make the breakfast you consume tastier, easier to digest and more nutritious.
Soaking oats potentially, depending on how you do it, performs several actions:
- It hydrates and softens the grain, meaning your digestive system has an easier time with assimilation and you don’t lose water as that happens.
- It imbues the oats and soak water with probiotics, meaning that when you cook your oats, they’ll be full of postbiotics and paraprobiotics which are incredibly health-giving.
- It gifts the oats a tangy ‘sourdough’ flavour.
- It can neutralise the mineral-stealing phytic acid, meaning that when you consume the oats, you’re maximising your ability to absorb minerals.
Soaking your oats in water will accomplish number 1 above – softening your grain and making it easier to digest.
Soaking your oats in water and an acidic medium with live probiotics (i.e. sourdough starter, milk kefir, apple cider vinegar) will achieve numbers 1, 2 and 3 above – you’ll have probiotic-containing, tangy, easy-to-digest oats. It may also go some way to step 4 – studies have shown that, in some conditions, yeasts and bacteria can work to neutralise phytic acid.
But, in order to achieve all four of the above; to do our best to neutralise the mineral-stealing phytic acid in oats, we need to include a freshly-ground, high-phytase grain in the soaking mix. To understand why, read my article The Low Down on Oats and Phytic Acid.
So let’s talk practicalities:
The Best Way to Soak Oats
What you’ll need:
- Oats, rolled or flaked
- Freshly-ground rye flour (or for gluten-free you can use freshly-ground buckwheat)
- Non-chlorinated water
- Acidic ‘live’ medium: sourdough starter, milk kefir, sauerkraut juice – anything that comes from an unpasteurised ferment
The amounts I use for breakfast for three people are 150g oats, 20g freshly-ground rye flour, 10g starter (I use rye sourdough starter) and 400-600ml of water.
What to do:
- Put the oats into a bowl and add the freshly-ground rye flour
- Stir the acidic ‘live’ medium into a jug of room temperature water then add the mix to the oats and rye, stirring well
- Cover lightly and leave at room temperature overnight
In the morning, pour the entire contents of the bowl into a saucepan, add extra water/milk, salt, spices (whatever you love to include!) and cook.
After much research into oats, traditional methods and the science of phytic acid, this is the way I soak my oats.
- The water is softening and hydrating them
- The freshly-ground rye (or buckwheat) flour is providing phytase to help neutralise phytic acid
- The live starter is creating an acidic environment (which is optimal for phytic acid reduction), providing me the benefits of beneficial microbes and giving me that tangy ‘sourdough’ flavour that I love.
If you would like to be able to create freshly-ground flour in your own kitchen, I’d recommend the counter-top stone mills made by Mockmill. It was my research into phytic acid and oats that finally made me take the leap and invest in one, and I could not be happier! You can take a look at the range and hear more about my experience here, and if you would like to purchase a Mockmill (in the US or UK) and use the links on this page, you’ll be supporting the work I do without paying any more for your mill.
If you want to hear me talk in detail on soaking and fermenting oats, listen to Ancestral Kitchen Podcast #70 – Fermenting Oats
If you’d like to try something different with these oats, try my Fermented Oat Bake.
Hello, thank you for your work. Sorry if my English is not very good. I speak French.
I buy your 8 $ Fermentation oat. it’s very interesting. I have 2 questions :
Is it possible to have a subtitle in the video ?
is it a problem to eat the fermented oat mixture raw ?
Thank you
Olivier
Hi Olivier,
I am sorry, I do not have the resources to subtitle the video.
There are instructions to do a simple oat fermentation that you can download from this page: https://ancestralkitchen.com/sourdough-porridge-series/ Perhaps it’s easier to translate those?
I have not eaten the fermented oats raw. I always cook them. Historically oats were eaten cooked (or with boiling water put on them). But most oats are steamed in the factory before they come to shops, so, if you can digest them, you could eat them raw.
I make my own kombucha, could I use this instead of the sourdough starter. many thanks Gloria
Yes Gloria, you can!
[…] In Weston A. Price’s studies, the people of Scotland were found to consume soaked oats in abundance. You can make your own delicious oatmeal for breakfast too! Just be sure you soak the oats. This removes the nutrient blocker, physic acid, and increases the availability of the nutrients. You can learn to soak oats here. […]
So after soaking overnight, there is no need to rinse the oats before cooking?
Correct Donna, no need to rinse.
Just wondering, if I want to eat oatmeal for lunch, if soaking the oats in the morning would provide enough time to eat them at lunch, or would it be better to prepare the night before and allow them to soak for 18 hours??
Thank you!
I would soak them the night before, if you can. I soak mine overnight. If you forget or can’t a shorter soak in the morning is better than not soaking.
Thank you!
Why do I need to both use rye or buckwheat (raw buckwheat groats good?) and acidic environment?
ACV good? How many tablespoons/teaspoons? Steel cut oats good to use? Same soaking time?
The rye or buckwheat provides phytase and the acidic environment aids its work. Apple cider vinegar will create an acidic environment, yes. I have not seen research on steel cut but would guess that the particles cannot be accessed as easily as they are not ground so small, so perhaps it’s not as easy to process them this way as it is rolled oats.
Should beans be handled similarly or acid not necessary? Should bean soaking water be discarded and replaced before cooking?
I have developed difficulties digesting beans during last 2 years, since over 65.
If fermenting is good, why does intestinal fermenting of beans cause much gas? Do you know if cooking with kombu helps, and/or rinsing and recooking canned beans (not my favorite but have a few gift cases of organic ones in bpa free cans)
Thank you!
I rarely eat beans. Traditional wisdom would say acid water soak, yes, and yes, discard the water.
Beans are not my forte…there are other sites that go into why beans create gas – it’s to do with the digestion of their complex sugars. Pre-processing fermentation helps with the breakdown of these before they get into our intestines
Hi There, can you use apple cider vinegar as the acidic medium and roughly how much should I add? Many thanks for your helpful information.
Yes, you can! For porridge for 3 (we use 160g), I’d use a tablespoon.
Hello Ali!
Instead of cooking the oats in a saucepan, can I put them in the oven and dehydrate them for a couple of hours?
Also, thank you so much for sharing your knowledge with us.
Hi Telma! Though I’ve never done this myself, I think it’d work fine.
Thanks, I’ll try it out and let you know how it worked out.
Hello,
Im in the process of trying to streamlie my diet to be as healthy as possible. Im glad for your informatio on how to remove the phytic acid from oatmeal i have a few qustions and was wondering could you help me out?
1. I eat oatmeal every breakfast and want to do this process of preping to remove phytic acid daily. What would the conversion in your instructions be for somone who uses 50g of dry rolled oats( makes 1 cup cooked) instead of the 150 grams of oats? also instea dof usinng a acidic live medium could i use powdered probiotics? I saw this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLsX4E_vUG0&t=411s which she uses probiotics with those specific ones.
2. Why do you not drain the water after soaking is completed wont the phytic acid still stay in the water defeating the purpose?
If I was using less oats, I’d use proportionally less starter (ie in your case, a third). But it’s not an exact science – like sourdough bread it depends so how sour you want your oats, your temperature and many other factors.
Yes, you could use probiotic powders.
The phytic acid is neutralised in the soak, not leeched into the water. Therefore there’s no need to drain.
Thank you for all the lovely content on fermenting oats (I just came here from listening to the podcast episode).
I have myself experimented for some years now in fermenting oats. My stomach seems to be highly sensitive to phytic acid, which means that I can only eat oats when they are pre-soaked together with something that contains phytase. In my own trials (with my sensitive stomach as guidance), I’ve had success with adding raw, whole buckwheat groats to the flaked oats, together with an acidic medium and water. Meaning that for 200 g flaked oats, I’ll add 1 tablespoon whole buckwheat groats + 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar and filtered water to cover it all.
As you already mentioned, there is a lack of research on ways to lower phytic acid from oats. And I only have my sensitive stomach as guidance (which can’t really substitute research and lab tests). Nevertheless, I wanted to put this out here, that for my stomach, whole groats seems to be working (meaning, I haven’t had a need for milling the buckwheat into a flour). As mentioned, whole groats stay fresh for longer than it would as a flour, and perhaps(?) the process of soaking releases phytic acid from the whole buckwheat groats. Perhaps, as well, all of this is nuanced (meaning that my stomach can tolerate some lower level of phytic acid) and by adding freshly milled flour would produce a better result than with the whole groats.
Nevertheless, if it’s helpful to anyone who has issues with phytic acid, it can be worth a try by adding whole groats to the soaking. Also, whole groats can be added to a blender or small food processor (use a smaller machine for smaller amounts) if you’re not able to purchase a mill atm.
Sidenote: I add buckwheat due to gluten sensitivity (as buckwheat is gluten free).
Thanks Sarah for your informative and balanced response.
In this, as in all digestive matters, we only have our own experience to work with and I’m glad you’ve found a solution that works for you. It’d be interesting to see some research on phytase potential in whole grains 🙂