To many modern cooks it looks strange, perhaps even unappetising. Yet for generations caul fat was a valuable ingredient. It wrapped sausages, protected joints of meat during roasting and, perhaps most famously, encased faggots.

Today, faggots are often misunderstood. The name raises eyebrows, in the UK they are a supermarket convenience food. But traditional faggots tell a different story. They belong to a world in which every part of the animal was valued, where liver and kidney were everyday foods, and where thrift and good eating went hand in hand.

For anyone interested in ancestral foods, faggots are a perfect example of nose-to-tail cooking. They transform humble ingredients into something nourishing, economical and deeply satisfying.

Faggot – A Dish Born of Economy

Historically, faggots were working people’s food.

They were made from the parts of the animal that wealthier households often ignored: liver, heart, lights (lungs), kidneys and fatty trimmings. Rather than being wasted, these cuts were minced together, seasoned generously and wrapped in caul fat before baking.

The result was far more delicious than the humble ingredients might suggest. The offal provided richness and nutrition, while the caul fat basted the meat as it cooked, creating a dish that was both economical and satisfying.

While traditionally, faggots relied heavily on offal, recipes these days include minced pork and bacon alongside liver and kidney, making them more approachable to modern tastes.

What Is Caul Fat?

One of the most distinctive features of faggots is the wrapping.

Caul fat is the thin membrane of fat that surrounds the stomach and internal organs of an animal. Pig caul fat is particularly delicate, resembling a lace curtain or net. Despite its fragile appearance, it is surprisingly strong.

When wrapped around a faggot, the caul fat performs several jobs. It holds the mixture together, just like a sausage casing would. As it cooks, it melts slowly into the meat, keeping it moist and adding flavour. By the end of cooking, you don’t even notice the caul fat, it has disappeared into the faggot itself.

Beef caul fat can also be used, but it is considerably thicker than pork caul fat.

Traditional Pork Faggots

This version combines pork mince, liver, kidney and bacon with mushrooms, onion, oats and warming spices. It includes an onion and mushroom-enhanced gravy, which is poured over the uncooked faggots in their baking dish before the whole thing is put in the oven.

• Makes: 12 faggots
• Preparation time: 40 minutes
• Cooking time: 40 minutes

Ingredients

For the Faggots

• 500g pork mince/ground pork
• 100g pig liver
• 1 pork kidney
• 4 rashers back bacon (if you are using streaky (American) bacon, use 6 rashers)
• 1 onion
• 150g mushrooms (about 6 medium mushrooms)
• c. ⅜ cup oatmeal (oatmeal is the English term for uncooked, stone-ground oats. If you can’t get this, you can use rolled oats that have been ground into a coarse flour.)
• Salt, to taste
• Black pepper, to taste
• Ground mace, to taste
• Ground allspice, to taste
• Pig caul fat

For the Gravy

• 1 onion, chopped
• Mushrooms, chopped
• Stock (pork or chicken work best)
• Flour, for thickening (most often I use chickpea flour)

Method

1. Remember to, at the right time in your process, preheat your oven to 180°C (350°F).
2. Roughly chop the liver, kidney, bacon, onion and mushrooms.
3. Place them in a food processor with the pork mince, oatmeal, salt, pepper, mace and allspice.
4. Pulse until everything is finely minced and evenly combined and a consistency that can be loosely shaped into balls. If your meat was previously-frozen you may need more oatmeal/oat flour to do this. (You can do steps 2 and 3 by hand if desired, cutting the ingredients up finely.)
5. Carefully unravel the caul fat, separating it into pieces large enough to wrap individual faggots, each at least 6 inches square.
6. Shape the mixture into balls roughly the size of large golf balls.
7. Place each ball onto a piece of caul fat and wrap it around the meat, tucking the ends underneath.
8. Arrange the wrapped faggots in a lidded baking dish with the tucked side facing down.

This mixture usually makes 12 faggots. If you find that you have mixture left over, you can, if you have enough caul fat, make more faggots or you can shape the mixture into burgers to fry. These taste really good!

To Make the Gravy (to be added to the baking dish)

1. Gently fry the chopped onion and mushrooms before adding the stock.
2. Thicken this mixture to make a gravy. I use chickpea flour, adding 2 rounded tbsp per 500mil stock. I make a paste with the flour, taking a little warm stock from the saucepan and stirring it into the flour before returning the paste to the saucepan and stirring the whole thing for 5-10 minutes while the flour cooks and thickens the liquid.
3. Pour the gravy around the faggots in the baking dish.

Put the lid (or foil) over the dish. Bake at 180°C (350°F) for about 40 minutes, until the faggots are cooked through and the gravy is bubbling.

Serve with greens and plenty of gravy.

Why Faggots Deserve a Place on the Modern Table

Faggots remind us of a way of eating that was once entirely normal.

Earlier generations understood that the most nutritious parts of an animal were often the least expensive. Offal wasn’t a specialist ingredient. It was simply food. Caul fat wasn’t discarded. It was valued for the flavour and practicality it brought to the kitchen.

Today many people are trying to eat more sustainably, make better use of the animals they buy and reconnect with traditional foods. Faggots embody all of those values. They are nourishing, economical and rooted in centuries of practical wisdom.

Most of all though, they are delicious. And making them this way, with pork mince/ground pork and bacon, with a rich gravy, you really do not notice that liver and kidney are hiding inside. THey are a great way to get kids eating offal!

Why Are They Called Faggots?

Historically, the word faggot referred to a bundle of sticks tied together for fuel. The term comes from the same root as the French fagot, meaning a bundle of twigs. By extension, the word was also used for anything gathered together into a compact bundle.

In culinary terms, the name makes perfect sense. A traditional faggot is a collection of minced meats and offal bound together into a ball and wrapped in caul fat. It is, quite literally, a bundle of ingredients tied together.

Food historians generally regard this as the origin of the dish’s name. Similar uses of the word can be found in historical English dialects, where faggot was used for various kinds of bundled materials.

While the word has acquired other meanings over time, the dish preserves the older and entirely innocent sense of the term. In the Black Country, South Wales and other areas where faggots remained popular, the name has continued in everyday use for generations.

In that respect, faggots are rather like haggis, pudding and other traditional foods whose names preserve traces of older ways of speaking and thinking. The dish is not simply a recipe; it is a small piece of cultural history that has survived on the dinner table long after much of the world that created it has disappeared.

Frequently Asked Questions

What do faggots taste like?

These faggots have a rich, savoury flavour something like pork meatballs. The liver provides depth, while the bacon, pork and spices soften its intensity. Even people who don’t usually enjoy liver are often surprised by how much they like faggots.

Can I make faggots without caul fat?

Yes, but the result will be different. Caul fat helps hold the faggots together and bastes them as they cook. Without it they can become drier and less tender. If you cannot find caul fat, you can still make the mixture into meatballs and bake it in the gravy.

Where can I buy caul fat?

A traditional butcher or your local farmer is your best source. You’ll probably need to ask for it specially and give them a bit of notice.

Can I freeze faggots?

Yes, I freeze them often – both before and after cooking. If freezing before cooking, place them on a tray until firm and then transfer them to a container or freezer bag.

Why are faggots wrapped in caul fat?

Historically, caul fat was an economical way of holding minced meat together before modern casings and packaging were widely available. It also improves flavour and texture by slowly melting into the meat during cooking.

What stock should I use in faggots?

I use home-made bone broth or meat stock. If you’d like to know more about how to go about producing this yourself, listen to Ancestral Kitchen Podcast episode Bones & Water: The Magic of Stock

Are faggots healthy?

Traditional faggots are nutrient-dense foods. Liver and kidney are rich in vitamins and minerals, while the oats add texture and help bind the mixture. As with many traditional foods, they are most satisfying when served as part of a balanced meal with vegetables.

Can I use different offal?

Absolutely. Historical recipes varied considerably. Heart, lights (lungs) and other inexpensive cuts were commonly used alongside liver. The exact ingredients often depended on what was available after slaughter.

Are faggots Welsh or English?

Both. Faggots are particularly associated with South Wales and the English Midlands, especially the Black Country. Closely related recipes appear across Britain, reflecting a widespread tradition of turning inexpensive cuts and offal into nourishing meals.

You might also like:

My 5 Favourite Ways to Use Bone Broth
What Does Eating Ancestrally Mean?
Traditional Scottish Oatcakes

The Ancestral Food Fridge

I’ve been eating ancestrally for the past 15 years and the contents of my fridge reflect that. Ancestral eating is a way of life, rather than a strict set of rules, but there are certain things that you’ll often find in both mine, and other ancestral eaters’ fridges. This list in a great way to understand what the ancestral diet is, so let’s break them down:

Ferments

Fermentation is a backbone of the ancestral diet and you’ll always find ferments in an ancestral fridge.

Mine has vegetable ferments such as sauerkraut, dairy ferments like milk kefir and yogurt and fermented condiments including garlic and miso. Along with this, my fridge door houses drinks (made fizzy with the help of natural probiotics) like water kefir and, my family’s favourite, boza.

The actual fermentation of all of these happens on my worktop. Once the food or drink has reached the flavour and acidity I’m after, it goes into the fridge, where the cold slows the fermentation right down. That means it’s ready to enjoy over the coming weeks without changing too quickly.

My family don’t eat huge quantities. Instead, a spoonful of fermented vegetables alongside a meal, a glass of water kefir or a little boza as a nourishing snack brings variety, depth of flavour and living cultures into everyday eating.

If you’re new to fermentation, water kefir is one of the easiest places to start. It’s a naturally fermented, lightly sparkling drink that’s simple to make at home. If you’d like to explore one of the world’s oldest fermented grain drinks instead, have a read of What is Boza?. If you’d prefer to have a go at vegetable fermentation, check out my Super-Simple Sauerkraut.

In addition to these edible ferments, I also store my sourdough starters in the fridge in between bakes – this makes them much easier to manage. I detail my process in my pay-what-you-can mini-course Make & Maintain a Rye Sourdough Starter

Raw Dairy

There is always some dairy in my fridge and, if I can source it, I choose raw milk products.

Most of the dairy sold today is pasteurised, a process born of the industrialisation. Raw dairy, by contrast, feels like a living food.

If raw milk isn’t available where you live, check for cheese instead, some are made with raw milk. You can also use traditional milk fermentation practises to make yogurt or kefir which can add multiple benefits to carefully selected pasteurised milk.

In addition to fermented dairy I also almost always have butter for spreading and cooking and very regularly cream too, which is served with fruit and goes into dishes such as stews and risottos.

Meat and Offal

Rather than choosing only the standard selections, popular in supermarkets, the ancestral diet uses a variety of meat, including lesser-known cuts and offal. These bring variety in terms of flavour and nutrients as well as often being the economical choice.

In my fridge, you’ll often find joints that require long, slow cooking, bones waiting to be made into stock, liver which will become pate, along with favourites such as sausages from my local farmer.

There’s also usually a lot of previously cooked leftover meat – they are especially valuable because they can make lunches or snacks quick and effortless.

Here’s my popular recipe for slow-cooked beef heart. The leftovers can be made into multiple meals. I talk about how I do this in practise in this podcast episode

Saturated Fat

Butter, tallow (from cows) and lard (from pigs) are always in my fridge, each kept in its own container and ready for cooking.

These traditional fats have being used to cook family meals for generations. I use them to roast vegetables, to fry eggs, in sheet pan dishes, to start soups and risottos, in stews, and also to fry pancakes. I also spread butter or lard on bread.

Unlike the seed oils that have become common in modern kitchens, these are the fats my ancestors would have recognised. Having them ready makes it easy to cook almost every meal with traditional fats rather than reaching for industrially processed alternatives.

I render lard and tallow myself at home from locally produced fat that I buy directly from my farmer. Here’s an introduction into rendering in your own kitchen.

Seasonal Vegetables

The contents of my vegetable drawer change with the seasons. For me, in the northern hemisphere, in winter it’s likely to be cabbages, root vegetables, leeks and hardy greens. Spring brings asparagus and fresh herbs, summer means tomatoes, courgettes and cucumbers, while autumn sees mushrooms and the last of the beans.

In an ideal world I’d grow all of these myself, but not all of us have the space, time or resources to do that. The next best thing is to buy locally whenever possible. Seasonal vegetables that haven’t travelled far are often fresher, taste better and support local growers too.

Condiments and Flavour-Bringers

Alongside mustard, horseradish and mayonnaise (often homemade) you’ll often find preserved lemons, fermented garlic, miso, chutneys, Worcestershire sauce and fish sauce in a fridge of someone who follows an ancestral diet.

These aren’t there because ancestral foodies cook elaborate meals. They’re there because a spoonful of something savoury, tangy or deeply fermented can transform a simple plate of meat and vegetables or a bowl of soup into something far more interesting. I regularly use miso in dishes such as this Breakfast Bone Broth Bowl.

Lots of Leftovers

Perhaps the biggest difference between the fridge of a family that eats an ancestral food diet and the average modern one is the number of leftovers.

A bowl of yesterday’s stew. Half a roast chicken. Cooked vegetables ready to become tomorrow’s soup. Stock cooling after making broth. Rice awaiting a teatime salad.

Cooking larger quantities saves time, reduces waste and means nourishing food is always within easy reach.

Many of our best meals begin not with a recipe but with opening the fridge and asking, “What can I make with what’s already here?”

A Fridge Full of Possibilities

People often imagine that an ancestral diet requires a fridge and pantry full of unusual ingredients. In reality, my fridge contains remarkably ordinary foods.

The difference isn’t so much what is there as how it’s been produced, how it’s prepared and how it fits together. Traditional fats instead of industrial oils. Fermented foods instead of ultra-processed snacks. Leftovers instead of ready meals. Seasonal vegetables instead of packets that have been shipped half way around the world.

Every fridge tells a story. Mine tells the story of a kitchen where food is cooked from scratch, fermented foods are always close at hand, and yesterday’s meal is often the beginning of today’s.

If you’d like a deeper look inside two ancestral food refrigerators on opposite sides of the world listen to What’s in our Fridges? from Ancestral Kitchen Podcast.

You Might Also Like:

Twenty Steps to an Ancestral Kitchen – this free PDF download with an informative resource list can be found at the top of any page on my podcast site.

5 Simple Ways to Start Cooking Ancestrally

What Does Eating Ancestrally Mean?

What Ancestral Eating Isn’t

I often get questions, such as: What’s the difference between ancestral and paleo? Does an ancestral diet include grains? What foods can you eat on an ancestral diet? And what did our ancestors really eat?

Their answers are more complex – and, often, more interesting – than many articles online and in books would have you believe. They also give each of us, no matter where we live, what our health goals are and how much money we have, a positive way out of our society’s unhealthy, industrial food world.

The ‘ancestral diet’, as I see it here at Ancestral Kitchen, is not a rigid set of rules, but a way of learning from the wisdom of food traditions that nourished generations before us. Rather than cutting food groups, worrying about calories or following the latest trend, this way of eating turns to traditional food cultures for its foundations, practises and inspiration.

In this guide, we’ll explore what an ancestral diet is, what foods it includes, how traditional peoples prepared their food, and how you can begin eating ancestrally in your own home.

What Is the Ancestral Diet?

The ancestral diet is an approach to eating based on traditional foods and traditional methods of food preparation. It does not prescribe a single list of approved foods. Instead, it asks us to consider and learn from how people ate before industrial food production transformed the food supply.

>> What is Ancestral Eating? (Ancestral Kitchen Podcast episode)

Not all traditional cultures around the world ate the same way. Scottish crofters, English farm labourers, Mediterranean villagers and Arctic hunters all ate different diets. Yet certain principles appear again and again:

• Real, minimally processed foods
• Seasonal ingredients
• Traditional animal fats
• Fermented foods
• Home cooking
• Time-tested methods of preparation

The ancestral diet is therefore best understood not as a set of rules but as a philosophy of food rooted in history, tradition and practical kitchen skills.

Ancestral Diet Foods: What Can You Eat?

One of the most common questions people ask is: what foods can you eat on an ancestral diet?

No traditional food group is excluded, which means the answer is surprisingly broad.

Animal Foods

• Meat
• Fish and shellfish
• Eggs
• Organ meats
• Bone broths and stocks >> Bones & Water: The Magic of Stock (Ancestral Kitchen Podcast episode)

Dairy Foods

• Milk
• Cream
• Butter
• Cheese
• Yoghurt
• Kefir

Vegetables and Fruit

Fresh, seasonal produce formed an important part of many traditional diets. Depending on the season, foods were eaten fresh, dried, fermented or preserved.

Grains and Legumes

• Oats
• Wheat
• Rye
• Barley
• Peas
• Beans

Contrary to popular belief, grains and legumes have played important roles in many traditional diets. But they were rarely eaten as they are today – ancient varieties were standard and special preparation methods, which we can easily recreate in our modern kitchens – were employed to make them more nutritious.

>> Baking with Ancient Grains (free 30-page downloadable guide)

Traditional Fats

• Butter
• Tallow
• Lard
• Dripping

>> The Fats We Love, The Fats We Leave (Ancestral Kitchen Podcast episode)

Ancestral Diet Foods: A Historical Perspective

The Industrial Revolution began in the UK in the late 1700s. Ancestral food encompasses the food ways and traditions that came before it. Many modern discussions of ancestral eating focus almost exclusively on what stone-age man ate, missing the nigh on 5,000 years between the end of pre-history and the beginning of industry. In those 5,000 years our ancestors practised local, sustainable food ways that enabled their communities to thrive.

Fermented foods, slow-cooked stocks, nose-to-tail eating, saturated fat and sourdough – these were routinely part of traditional food cultures right up until industrialisation.

Over that time, there was never a single ancestral diet. Instead, there have been countless ancestral diets shaped by climate, geography, culture and available ingredients.

What Did Our Ancestors Really Eat?

Our ancestors ate what was available to them – the land shaping their diets.

In Scotland, oats formed the foundation of daily life for centuries – porridge and oatcakes sustaining generations of families. In parts of northern Europe, sourdough rye breads were staple foods. Across much of the Mediterranean, bread, legumes and dairy products featured prominently.

Most traditional diets included a mixture of plant and animal foods. Meat was often valued and celebrated, but in many communities it was eaten less frequently than modern assumptions suggest.

The ancestral diet is about recognising the common threads that connect traditional food cultures around the world: real food, careful preparation, seasonal eating and practical kitchen wisdom.

Traditional Food Preparation Is Central to the Ancestral Diet

When people discuss ancestral diet foods, they often focus on ingredients. Traditional cultures, however, paid equal attention to preparation. Their methods included:

• Fermenting
• Soaking
• Sprouting
• Culturing
• Slow-cooking
• Drying and preserving

A traditional sourdough loaf differs significantly from a modern industrial loaf. Likewise, a long-cooked bone broth is a different food to a powdered stock cube.

Understanding these methods helps us appreciate that the ancestral diet is about more than simply choosing different ingredients.

Why Fermented Foods Matter in an Ancestral Diet

Fermentation appears repeatedly in traditional food cultures around the world.

Milk became yoghurt and cheese. Vegetables became pickles and sauerkraut. Grains became sourdough breads and porridges.

Fermentation preserved precious food harvests, improved flavour and made food more digestible, Cheese and salami are just two examples of how it also created entirely new culinary traditions.

>>What We’re Fermenting Right Now (Ancestral Kitchen Podcast episode)

Can Grains Be Part of an Ancestral Diet?

Yes. History tells a much more nuanced story than many modern diet debates.

Many traditional societies relied on grains as staple foods. Oats sustained much of Scotland. Millet was integral to many communities in Africa and Eastern Europe. Heritage wheat featured prominently across the Mediterranean and Middle East.

The much more useful question to ask is not whether grains were eaten, but how they were prepared.

>> Baking with Ancient Grains (free 30 page PDF with instructions and five recipes!)

Is the Ancestral Diet the Same as Paleo?

No. While the two approaches overlap in some areas, they are not identical.

Many traditional cultures consumed dairy foods, grains and legumes.

The ancestral diet draws inspiration from a wide range of traditional food cultures rather than attempting to recreate a single prehistoric menu.

What Does an Ancestral Diet Look Like in Practice?

An ancestral diet can be a lot simpler than you may imagine. Here’s an example of what’s eaten in my house:

Breakfast

Sourdough porridge topped with soaked nuts/seeds, cream with optional seasonal fruit.

Midday meal

A slow-cooked beef stew served with ancient grain sourdough bread.

Supper

Eggs scrambled in lard, millet cooked in bone broth, seasonal salad.

Snacks

Cheese, oatcakes spread with butter, soaked nuts/seeds, seasonal fruit.

An ancestral diet is nutrient-dense, delicious and satisfying – yet it need not be complicated. Leftovers regularly feature in our meals and foods are often repeated. The aim is not perfection or historical re-enactment. The goal is to bring traditional food wisdom into modern life.

>> A Week of Ancestral Meals: What We Really Ate (Ancestral KItchen Podcast episode)

How to Start an Ancestral Diet

Many people ask me this question! I like to suggest picking one thing that appeals to you and starting there. Below is a list of places you could begin, each followed by a resource of mine which will help you get going:

• Learn to make stock >> Bones & Water: The Magic of Stock (Ancestral Kitchen Podcast episode)
• Create a sourdough starter and learn how to bake a loaf >> Make & Maintain a Rye Sourdough Starter (pay what you can mini-course)
• Ferment some vegetables >> Super-Simple Sauerkraut Recipe (blog post)
• Cook more meals from scratch. >> Preparing Nutrient-Dense Meals from Scratch Every Day (Ancestral Kitchen Podcast episode)
• Replace ultra-processed snacks with traditional foods (blog post coming soon!)
• Swap out industrial seed oils for traditional fats >> How to Render Fat at Home (with Q&A) (Ancestral Kitchen Podcast episode)
• Ferment your morning oats >> The Best Way to Soak Oats (blog post)

Small steps are the key to making sustainable change. If you’d like a guide to help you get started, download 20 Small Steps to an Ancestral Kitchen from the top of any page on website of the show I co-host, Ancestral Kitchen Podcast.

Frequently Asked Questions About the Ancestral Diet

Is the ancestral diet the same as the paleo diet?

No. The ancestral diet takes a broader historical view and includes many foods that traditional cultures ate, including dairy products, fermented grains and legumes.

Can you eat grains on an ancestral diet?

Yes. Many traditional cultures relied heavily on grains such as oats, rye, barley and wheat. Traditional preparation methods were often as important as the grains themselves. >> All About Grains: Preparing, Processing & Digesting! (Ancestral Kitchen Podcast episode)

Is sourdough part of an ancestral diet?

Absolutely. Sourdough is one of the oldest and most widespread traditional methods of grain preparation.

Can you eat dairy on an ancestral diet?

Many traditional cultures consumed dairy foods, particularly butter, cream, cheese, yoghurt and other cultured dairy products. They traditionally ate non-pasteurised milk >> Raw Milk: Our Ancestral Heritage (Ancestral Kitchen Podcast episode)

Are potatoes part of an ancestral diet?

Yes. Potatoes have nourished traditional communities for centuries and fit comfortably within an ancestral approach to eating.

Can you eat rice on an ancestral diet?

Yes. Rice has sustained traditional societies across Asia for thousands of years and remains one of the world’s most important staple foods.

What foods should be avoided on an ancestral diet?

Most people focus on minimising ultra-processed foods, industrial seed oils, sugary soft drinks and highly refined snack foods.

Do I need to make everything from scratch?

Although we can all get passionate about making change, trying to do everything at once is, as I know, a recipe for disaster! Start with one practice such as making broth, baking sourdough or fermenting vegetables and build gradually.

Final Thoughts: What Is the Ancestral Diet Really About?

At its heart, the ancestral diet is about learning from the generations who came before us.

It is not a rigid meal plan; there is no list of forbidden foods.

Rather, it encourages us to explore traditional foods, traditional preparation methods and traditional kitchen skills.

Whether that means baking sourdough, making broth, fermenting vegetables, cooking with traditional fats or rediscovering regional food traditions, the goal is the same: to bring the wisdom, joy and flavour of real, ancestral food into our modern kitchens.

More Resources:

Ancestral Kitchen Podcast has over 130 episodes focusing on all aspects of eating ancestrally in our modern-world kitchens.

If you’d like some recipe inspiration, check my stash here.

The Ancestral Kitchen Challenge is a fun, no pressure way to explore an ancestral diet, giving you achievable goals to work at in your kitchen.

In this post, we’ll explore what porridge really is, where it comes from, and why it has endured for millennia. We’ll travel from Stone Age hearths to Scottish kitchens, from barley and rye to oats and fermentation, and uncover how traditional porridge was made, eaten and valued. If you’ve ever wondered why porridge feels so deeply nourishing — or how to make a better bowl using ancestral methods — keep reading!

What Is Porridge? A Traditional Definition

Across the Atlantic, the words oatmeal and porridge mean very different things.

In the US, oatmeal usually means one specific dish: oats cooked with milk or water, often sweetened with brown sugar or maple syrup. In the UK (and much of northern Europe), the word porridge has traditionally been broader. It isn’t tied to one grain or one method. Porridge is, at heart, a grain-based stew — something cooked slowly in a pot.

The history of word itself tells the story. Porridge appears in English in the early 16th century and is closely related to pottage: a thick soup or stew cooked in a pot. The French potage and even the Latin porrum (leek — often used in thick stews) hover in the background. By the 17th century, porridge had come to mean a cereal cooked in water or milk. In Scotland it became parritch; in Ireland, stirabout.

When European settlers crossed to North America in the 17th and 18th centuries, they took the dish porridge with them — but used whatever grain grew locally, most often maize. Oatmeal didn’t take off in the US until later, when the company Quaker took advantage of recently-invented technology to roll oats: they saw a potential market for a new breakfast food and their ‘oatmeal’, promoted with the first ever national advertising campaign for a breakfast cereal, caught on.

How Long Have Humans Been Eating Porridge?

Porridge is ancient. Astonishingly ancient.

Archaeological finds in Italy show that around 32,000 years ago people were already drying, heating, grinding and cooking wild oats. Residues on a stone pestle reveal swollen, gelatinised oat grains — in other words, porridge.

In Denmark there is evidence of grain porridges from around 4200 BCE. And the famous Tollund Man, a bog body from around 400 BCE, had eaten a porridge-like meal shortly before his death — mostly barley, not oats.

This matters, because it reminds us that porridge is not all about oats. Oats are just one chapter in a much longer story.

Porridge Around the World: Grains, Roots and Legumes

Once you start looking, porridge is everywhere.

Rice becomes congee. Wheat becomes frumenty or cream of wheat. Barley was widely used in Britain before oats took over. Maize gives us polenta, atole, mush and grits. Millet makes glorious, creamy porridges across Africa and Asia. Buckwheat becomes kasha. Rye becomes the dark, sour Danish øllebrød. Sorghum, roots like taro (poi), even legumes (pease pottage) all find their way into the pot.

If you search for porridge with an open mind, you will almost certainly find one you have never tried. And that’s before we even begin to explore the many, many ways oats themselves can be made into the dish.

Traditional Oat Porridge: What, No Rolled Oats?!

Rolled oats dominate our shelves because they cook quickly. But they are a recent invention – roller milling only being developed in the late 1800s.

Traditionally, porridge was made from oats ground into a meal on a stone mill (confusingly, these stone-ground oats are called ‘oatmeal’ in British English). These stone-ground oats came in different grades – fine, medium or coarse/pinhead. Pinhead oatmeal, roughly the size of steel-cut oats, was especially prized for porridge. It takes longer to cook, but rewards you with depth of flavour and a far better texture.

Rolled oats, before you buy them, have been heat processed twice – once to stabilise them and a second time to help them roll more uniformly. Oatmeal, stone-ground oats, in comparison, have only been heat-treated once, for stabilisation. Less processing means more flavour, hence ‘proper’ porridge, made with stone-ground oats, does not need to be smothered in sweeteners to be enjoyable. Save the crazy toppings for the heavily-processed instant oats!

If you truly love porridge, one of the biggest upgrades you can make is to move away from shop-bought rolled oats – switch to pinhead oatmeal (or, if you’re in the UK, steel-cut oats) or roll your own oats from the whole grain at home. I’ve written a detailed guide on how to roll your own oats (and why it makes such a difference).

How to Make Traditional Oat Porridge (The Slow Way)

These days, oatmeal or porridge (depending on where you hail from) seems to be all about speed – the more quickly it can be cooked, the ‘better’. But cooked quickly, we miss out on flavour, texture and nutrition.

Here’s how you can make porridge more traditionally:

For everyday, pinhead (or steel-cut) oatmeal makes a superb porridge. It needs time — but you’ll not be tied to the stove:

• Soak pinhead oatmeal overnight in water (use four times as much water, by volume, to the oats).
• In the morning, bring the oats and their soaking water to the boil, then simmer gently for around 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

A method that produces an even better porridge, and one that mimics the very long cooking times of the past, needs a two-day approach:

• On the morning of day one, soak 1 cup pinhead oatmeal in 1½ cups water.
• In the evening, add a further 3 cups water, bring to the boil, then simmer gently for 30 minutes.
• Turn off the heat and leave, covered, overnight.
• The next morning, slowly reheat the porridge.

The result is a rich and deeply satisfying porridge — worlds away from anything hurried.

You can get three traditional oat recipes in my free download The Heritage Oat Collection. Enter your details below and I’ll send it to you inbox!

How Porridge Was Traditionally Eaten in Scotland

The Scots did not add sugar or honey to their porridge. In fact, porridge, traditionally, for them, and for all the other British porridge-eaters was a savoury dish – cooked with water and salted before serving.

Very often brought to the table in a communal bowls, each person would have their own spoon, usually made from horn. Milk, cream or buttermilk would be set on the table in a separate bowl. Rather than mixing it through, people would lift spoonfuls of hot porridge and dip them into the milk or cream as they ate.

Leftover porridge was never wasted and we can use it in our modern kitchens too! Try reheating it with a little more liquid, slicing it and eating cold, adding it to bread dough for a super-soft crumb, blending it into soups for extra creaminess or mixing it into a stiff dough with flour and eggs before frying into a thick pancake.

Fermented Porridge, Sowans and Forgotten Oat Traditions

Fermenting oats was once common, and for good reason. Fermentation improves flavour, makes nutrients more available, helps break down starches and phytic acid, and introduces beneficial bacteria.

One of the most fascinating Scottish oat dishes is sowans. Once central to Scottish life, sowans was made from the fermented soaking water of oats – creating both a porridge and a probiotic drink. It was born from thrift and necessity but, having made it regularly in my own kitchen now for nearly five years, I can attest that it is also absolutely delicious!

If you want to explore oat fermentation in more depth, I cover it extensively in episode 70 of my podcast, Ancestral KItchen Podcast: Fermenting Oats.

Why Porridge Is the Original Comfort Food

Porridge endures because it works. It is cheap, adaptable, nourishing and deeply comforting. And, these days, we can make it however we wish – plainly or elaborately, savoury or sweet, quickly or slowly.

Next time you wrap your hands around that steaming bowl, remember you are not indulging in a modern trend. You are standing in the shoes of your ancestors and participating in a delicious food tradition that stretches back tens of thousands of years.

You Might Also Like:

Traditional Scottish Oatcakes (Recipe)

What is Sowans?

Different Types of Oats (& How to use Each the Traditional Way)

Several decades on, I am still an oat-lover (in fact, I’m such a fan that I’m currently writing a book on traditional British uses of them). But if you look in my kitchen now, you’ll find many more types of oats than just my childhood rolled ones.

The choice on our shelves these days can be bewildering – groats, rolled, thick, old-fashioned, quick, instant, oatmeal, pinhead, steel-cut, sprouted, black and naked. This article is a comprehensive guide to the types of oats available, how they’ve been processed and how to use each type the traditional way.

What are oats?

Almost all of the oats you’ll find in kitchens throughout the world are seeds of the grass genus Avena Sativa. These grow covered by a hard, inedible hull which has to be removed before the seed can be used as a grain. The hull adheres strongly to the seed and in the process of removing it the grain is very often damaged and exposed to the air. This activates an enzyme called lipase which degrades the fats in the oats causing them to go rancid, giving them a bitter taste. To avoid this happening, oat grains are ‘stabilised’ (heat and steam treated) at the very early stages of processing.

Most of the oats we buy are already ‘cooked’

This stablilsation means that the oats that make it to our kitchens (unless they are naked or sprouted oats) have been ‘cooked’ using a mix of heat and moisture (at an average temperature of 90-100°C).

Once the dehulling and stabilisation has been completed, oats are processed in a number of ways. This article explains what you might see at your mill or supplier, sorted from the least-processed to the most-processed:

Types of oats, how they’ve been processed and how to use each the traditional way

Oat groats

These are whole, unground, uncut oat grain. As they are whole grains, they take the longest to cook of any oat.

These weren’t often traditionally-used for porridge (though our ancestors in the UK did use the for savoury ‘puddings’), but I think they are great cooked this way.

If you want to use oat groats for porridge/oatmeal, cook them as an alternative to rice or add them to a stew, I suggest soaking them overnight in water. The next day, drain and rinse them, before cooking for at least 35 minutes. For a cup of soaked groats, you’ll need around 3 cups of liquid (broth is a great savoury choice instead of water here!)

Stone-milled oats:

The only way of making the whole oat grains into smaller pieces, more suitable for cooking, until well into the 1900s was to process the grains in stone mill. This created a meal (rather than the more commonly found rolled oats we see today). This meal is what our European oat eating ancestors (who didn’t have rolled oats) would have eaten.

Why Our Scottish Ancestors Didn’t Eat Rolled Oats (link to article)

Stone milled oats are still available, though can be harder to source outside of the UK. They come in three grades:

Pinhead oatmeal

Oat groats ground between two millstones set very widely apart to break the groat into a few pieces.

This was traditionally used for porridge (oatmeal), particularly in Ireland.

To make a traditional pinhead oatmeal porridge, soak the oatmeal in water overnight using one part oatmeal to four parts water by weight (you can add a tablespoon of something acidic, like apple cider vinegar to aid digestion) and then, in the morning, cook the mix, adding some salt (traditionally porridge was salty, not sweet), for 20 minutes, stirring regularly.

Medium oatmeal (often called Scottish oatmeal in the US)

These oats have been stoneground with the millstones set to create a medium meal.

Medium oatmeal was traditionally used for porridge in Scotland and in many other parts of the UK. It was also used in haggis, in puddings and sausages and as a coating when frying fish.

To make a traditional medium oatmeal porridge the Scottish way, bring water to the boil and, when it’s boiling, sprinkle in the medium oatmeal, stirring constantly. Once all of the oatmeal is incorporated, turn the pan down low, add salt (traditionally porridge was salty, not sweet) and simmer for 25 to 30 minutes, stirring regularly. To serve three people I use 180g medium oatmeal, 900g water and a half teaspoon salt.

Fine oatmeal

By stone-grinding the oat grains with the millstones more closely together, a fine oatmeal is produced.

Fine oatmeal was traditionally used for oatcakes – a savoury oat cracker – as well as a thickener for soups and stews.

Try my recipe for Naturally-Fermented Staffordshire Oatcakes which makes a delicious crêpe-like pancake or my Traditional Scottish Oatcakes recipe which will give you authentic Scottish oat crackers, great with soups or some cheese!

(If you want to try these two recipes and you don’t have fine oatmeal, don’t despair, they can easily be made with rolled oats too – follow the instructions in the recipes!)

Oats produced in steel mills:

In contrast to this traditional stone milling, most of the oats on our shelves today have been processed in modern steel mills. Here’s what you can find:

Steel Cut/Irish oats

Steel cut oats are so called because steel blades cut the whole groat into two or three pieces.

This type of oats are often called Irish oats in the US because the pieces are the same size as pinhead oatmeal, the type of oatmeal historically used to make porridge in Ireland.

In the kitchen, steel cut oats work in a similar way to their stone-ground cousin, pinhead oatmeal. If you want to make a traditional porridge with them, follow the instructions in the pinhead oatmeal section above.

Rolled Oats:

Rolled oats are so ubiquitous these days that one might think they’ve always been around. They are, however, a modern creation; the process of rolling oats only having been invented in 1877.

The Differences Between Rolled Oats and Oatmeal (link to article)

All rolled oats, whether large or small, are steam processed (for a second time, remembering they’ve already been steamed to prevent rancidity) before being rolled. This makes them softer and less likely to create dusty waste.

‘Old-fashioned’ Oats/Rolled Oats/Jumbo Oats

These, being the largest form of rolled oats, are whole oat grains that are re-steamed and run through roller mills to create large flakes.

These can be used to make a non-traditional (but very tasty!) porridge. There’s no need to soak them, cooking for 10-15 minutes on the stove does the job. If you’d like to serve traditionally, add salt during the cooking time.

I also have some traditionally-inspired recipes that use rolled oats! Try my cheesy oatcake-topped cottage pie or my sourdough oatcakes.

‘Quick Cook’ Rolled Oats

To make these smaller flaked oats, broken oat grains are re-steamed and put through roller mills.

These take just a few minutes on the stove to produce a porridge.

‘Instant’ Rolled Oats

These are the smallest, and hence the quickest cooking, form of rolled oats. They were brought to the oat market in 1966 by Quaker (who are now ownedi by Pepsi). Small pieces of oat grain are re-steamed and put through roller mills to create tiny, thin flakes.

I don’t think our ancestors would recognise instant oats (in texture or flavour). As a real food oat-lover, I’ve never used these.

The oat challenge:

If you’ve only ever used rolled oats, try something different this week. It’s easy to get hold of pinhead or steel cut oats – soak them before bed and take a few more moments in the kitchen to cook up your porridge the next morning. I think you’ll be surprised at how great it tastes!

Different Types of Oats – FAQs

Which type of oats is the healthiest?

Generally, the less a food is processed, the healthier it is. With this criteria, oat groats, that have had no further processing than their initial dehulling and stabilising are the healthiest.

But I am of the mind that the real food that you like is the healthiest. If you’re buying, cooking, and eating real food that you will like you’re more likely to continue with it – so choose the type of oat you like best.

How can I access stone-ground oats outside of the UK?

There are companies that import oats that have been stone-ground in the UK to other parts of the world. Check online to see if there’s one near you. In the US, Bob’s Red Mill sell a product called ‘Scottish oatmeal’ which is stoneground oats that are similar to British medium oatmeal.

Can I roll my own oats at home?

Yes you can! And they taste so much better rolled at home! Have a look at my article How to Roll Oats at Home (& 3 Good Reasons To Do It!).

Can I stone-grind my own oats at home?

It is possible to stone-grind oats from groats at home, but it is very difficult to replicate the pinhead/medium/fine grades of oatmeal that are available from large stone mills. This is because the stone mills use a number of sieves to sieve the meal into uniform sizes.

If you have a Mockmill, you can grind oats on any number above #3 (do not grind them on numbers #1 or #2 – the grain is too fatty and will clog up your meal). Using #3 or above will grind the oats but will give you a range of particle sizes from very fine dust to large chunks of oat groat. For making porridge this method works practically but does not replicate the porridge that you would make with uniform-sized commercially-produced oatmeal

How To Make Stone-Ground Oats in the Mockmill (link to article)

I love porridge/oatmeal. What else can I make with oats?

So many things! Here’s a selection of my traditional and traditionally-inspired recipes:

Traditional Scottish Oatcakes

Naturally-Fermented Staffordshire Oatcakes

Sourdough Oatcakes

Cheesy oatcake-topped cottage pie

Sowans: The Scottish Oat Ferment

You can get three traditional oat recipes in my free download The Heritage Oat Collection. Enter your details below and I’ll send to your inbox:

I am currently in the process of writing a book to be called Oats: Recipes & Stories from the British Isles. It will include 50 recipes along with the stories of how this grain sustained many generations of people in the UK. Stay in touch via my newsletter (there is a sign up at the top of every page on this site) to hear the latest on this.

How can I make my oats healthier?

Fermenting your oats will unlock more nutrition and make them easier to digest. Learn how in my comprehensive article:

How to Make Fermented Oats

Is buying organic oats important?

I would always recommend buying organic oats. Choosing organic means that you are supporting farmers who care for our soil and our environment, stewarding it for the next generation. It also means that any residues left over from pesticides or fertilisers aren’t on your grains.

What are ‘naked’ oats?

‘Naked’ oats are a type of oat that, instead of having a hard difficult-to-detach hull, has a paper-thin hull. It is easier to prepare these grains for human consumption – it takes a lot of energy to remove the hard hull on standard oats; not as much energy is needed to remove the paper-thin hull on ‘naked’ oats.

Because these ‘naked’ oats do not have to go through a tough, damaging, process to remove their hulls, they are not heated before they get to our shelves. This results in a oat that is raw.

What are sprouted oats?

Sprouted oats are raw oats that have gone through a soaking and germination process to sprout them. This process is then halted by drying and the sprout knocked off. The sprouted groats can then be used as you would use a standard oat.

What are black oats?

Black oats are a type of oats that has a black hull. They were traditionally grown in large areas of Scandinavia and in Wales. Here are some I saw on a visit to Holden Farm in Wales:

What about oat flour?

Oat flour is a modern phenomenon which is finer than fine oatmeal. It can be purchased but can also be made from oatmeal or rolled oats by processing them in a high-powered coffee grinder or mixer.

You might also like:

The Heritage Oat Collection

The Difference Between Rolled Oats and Oatmeal

Sourdough Porridge

The Fascinating History of Jannock: The Giant Oat Bread That Defined Authenticity!

The Best Way to Soak Oats

Traditional Scottish Oatcakes

I’ve been making sowans in my kitchen regularly for over five years – I love it – and I have also delved into its history for my forthcoming book on traditional British oat dishes. If you’re curious about sowans, this is the article for you!

Sowans, with a Scottish voice, is pronounced ‘sue-ens’. You might see it spelled ‘sowens’ and in the Shetland Isles it was called ‘Virpa’

History of sowans

Although oats have been eaten in the United Kingdom for thousands of years, widespread oat farming only took hold after the Roman invasion when the troops, in order to feed their horses, brought the oat grain to the British Isles. Oats love the UK’s wet, mild climate and quickly caught on as a staple crop.

Although we don’t find the oat fermentation sowans mentioned in literature until the 1600s, it is very likely, knowing how long parts of the UK have subsisted on oats, that this dish was being made long before that date.

Oats were grown close to home. After harvest, the farmers would sent their sacks of oat grains to the mill to be ground into flour (rolled oats didn’t come onto the scene until much later, read about it in my article Why Our Scottish Ancestors Didn’t Eat Rolled Oats). Once the miller had done his job, the householder would not only get sacks of prepared oats back, but also sacks of ‘waste’ (called sids).

These sids were the hulls that had been knocked off the oats as they were processed. Clinging to them were tiny pieces of the centre of the oat grain – the white, starchy endosperm.

Sowans was a zero-waste food

Instead of being thrown away, this bag of waste, the sids, was transformed, through fermentation, into delicious, nutritious food – sowans.

When mixed with water, these sids contained everything needed to complete the fermentation naturally. The tiny pieces of white starch gave the microorganisms in the ferment starch to feed on, and the hull pieces were a haven for yeasts and bacteria. This means that no inoculant (or starter) was needed to create an active ferment – it was already natively in the grain.

Sowans is a porridge

Once the fermentation was complete, the mixture was put through a sieve which removed the pieces of hull/bran and produced a smooth, white liquid. This liquid, which contained the fermenting water and the tiny pieces of the white oat grain was then cooked to produce a porridge.

Making sowans also creates a probiotic drink called swats

The liquid that the oats were fermented with had it’s own name – swats (or swots). This can be drunk as is (and that way is a live probiotic) or can be cooked along with the sowans and therefore included in the porridge. Often, our ancestors would use a large amount of swats in the saucepan and create a liquidy ‘drinking sowans’.

Sowans was traditionally consumed by the whole family on Christmas Eve which was, in some parts of Scotland, knows as ‘sowans nicht’ (sowans night).

Sowans is a health food

Sowans was considered a health food in Scotland. Diving into the process, it’s easy to see why:

Starting with the raw ingredient – oats, as most of us know, oats are known to be beneficial to health. They have a role to play in lowering cholesterol and maintaining blood sugar levels. They also contain beta-glucan which is a prebiotic – meaning it feeds the probiotics in your intestines.

Both the sowans and swats are probiotic foods. Because we cook the porridge sowans, the live probiotics are lost. That does not mean, however, that all the benefits of the fermentation are lost; the latest research tells us that fermentation microbes which remain behind after cooking are extremely beneficial to our health (read more here).

In addition, because the starch in sowans has been both fermented and pre-digested, it can nourish us with proteins/vitamins and minerals with very little digestive effort. This allows our bodies energy to be used in healing, rather than trying to break down our food.

What does sowans taste like?

I have been making sowans and swats in my kitchen regularly, using modern ingredients and equipment, for years. Myself and my family enjoy the product of this fermentation often and love it.

Sowans is creamy and smooth – it feels to me like eating clouds! It’s nuanced in flavour – pleasantly tart but with delicious honey aromas that arise from the fermentation.

The liquid that the oats ferment in, swats, is zingy and fresh, reminiscent of watery lemon juice. It is refreshing drunk cold on a hot day but also wonderful warmed and spiced.

How do you make sowans?

We may not grow oats in our backyard or have access to sacks of sids from our local mill, but we can still enjoy the flavour and health benefits of sowans and swats in our kitchens today!

Oats can be fermented with water (I’d recommend a 1:4 ratio of oats to water) for several days, sieved and then cooked up into this historic, traditional dish.

My course, Sowans: The Scottish Oat Ferment, will guide you through the whole process, no matter what grains you have access to or equipment you have in your kitchen. It includes two hours of video guidance and plenty of downloads to keep at hand. I explain what to look for at every stage and how you can ensure you are safely fermenting your grains.

Here’s a little peak at one of the videos included in the course:

How to eat sowans (and swats)

I want to leave you with the ways my family eat sowans and swats:

Sowans porridge:

Most often, I make a thick porridge with sowans by mixing it with double its volume in water. Other times, I cook the fermented oats in the swats liquid (the swats) instead of water.

Traditionally, this was eaten with salt and butter, but it is also delicious with fruit, honey and nuts or any of the toppings we add to porridge/oatmeal these days!

I also love sowans as a mashed potato substitute! Here it is with sausages:

Drinking sowans:

Drinking sowans is a warming, comforting cuppa. Here, I add more liquid before cooking and make a pourable sowans. This is lovely infused with spices and sweetened with honey.

Sowans in baked goods:

Sowans can also be used as an ingredient in baked goods. Sowans scones were popular in Scotland (there’s a recipe for them in my course). I have also used sowans very effectively in bread-baking to make a ‘scald’ for my sourdough breads. Here’s a link to the recipe for the bread if you want to give it a go!

Swats

Swats is wonderful drunk as it is. It is full of probiotics, zingy and really refreshing from the fridge in hot weather.

But the way I drink it most is gently warmed. I love it straight warm – it’s comforting and nourishing drink. But most often I make what I’ve coined as ‘mulled swats’ – I gently warm the swats on the stove with spices – cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, cardamon, mace, anise.

Aside from drinking, I have used swats as the liquid part of my sourdough breads and built bread starters (or leavens) using swats. I also use the liquid as a starter in other ferments – anywhere where I need a starter.

You might also like:

Traditional Scottish Oatcakes

Sourdough Oatcakes

How to Make Fermented Oats

There’s nothing like a breakfast of warm oats on a cold winter day. It’s like a hug in a bowl, and one you know will keep you going until lunch.

But have you tried making your morning oats with fermented oats?

And how about making it zero-waste and adding a probiotic oat drink on the side?

Fermenting oats, zero-waste and probiotic – they all sound so modern you might think they were part of the latest sustainability or health drive. But you’d be wrong. The Scots have been fermenting their oats into two products – a creamy porridge called sowans and a probiotic drink called swats – for centuries!

How it started

The Romans brought the oat grain to Scotland and, seeing that it was perfect for the northern climate and Scottish soil, it soon took hold. Most households back then were subsistence farms who, along with growing their own produce and raising animals, also grew oats. After harvest, they’d send their prized oat grain to the local mill.

Once the oats were ground, they’d get two sacks back from the miller: one sack contained their ground oats and the other sack was full of ‘waste’ – all the bits that had come loose from the grain kernels during the milling process.

The contents of this second sack had a special name: sids. It would have been a dusty mixture of husks (the very outside part of the grain, which protects it), hulls (the bran of the grain) and tiny white crumbs from the body of the oat grain that’d got stuck to the hulls and escaped the mill-stone’s power. Here’s how it looked:

The Scots had traditional ways to use their ground oats; oat cakes being a great example. But they also had a traditional way of using the bag of left-over oat ‘waste’, and that was to ferment it!

Let’s start with how to lacto-ferment oats…

Fermenting rolled oats is quite simple. Put your oats in a bowl, add water and a bacteria-rich starter culture (yogurt, kefir, sourdough starter etc.), stir and wait. The bacteria will start to predigest the compounds in the grain, potentially harmful plant toxins will be neutralised and beautiful fermented flavours will start to develop. (If you want to learn how to do this, check out my video Healthy, Fermented Oats).

The Scots’ extreme oat fermentation!

The Scots took their oat fermentation a step further – wild fermenting the bag of ‘waste’ returned to them by the mill.

The white starchy ‘crumbs’ from the inside of the grain provided the food for the bacteria and yeasts naturally present on the broken pieces of hull/husk left behind after milling. No starter culture was needed, the only addition being water.

And what they got…

After up to two weeks of fermentation, the Scots strained the husk/hull pieces from the fermented mixture and were left with the two foods: Sowans, a creamy porridge and Swats, a tangy drink:

Both were health foods. The sowans because the fermentation process had not only neutralised plant toxins and pre-digested many of the starches, but it had also had the harder-to-digest bran fibre strained out. The swats because, drunk as is, it was full of probiotic bacteria.

And all this, from ‘waste’?!

How we can recreate this in our kitchen

Re-creating sowans and swats in our modern-day kitchens, where we are far more likely to buy in our oats than grow them in our backyard, requires some ingenuity, but is worth the effort.

I’ve been fermenting oat grain into sowans and swats regularly for many years in my home. I love the liquid swats gently heated with spices and my 11-year old son adores the smooth, ice-cream-like texture of the sowans as his morning porridge.

Most often, I use a roller mill to make the grain into porridge oats and ‘waste’ crumbs, but I’ve also often made sowans and swats by pulverising oat groats in my blender or with oat flour.

If you’re interested in taking your oat fermentation to the next level and stepping into the shoes of a Scot a few hundred years ago, check out my course, Sowans: The Scottish Oat Ferment. In it, I’ll guide you through how to make the ferment with whatever equipment you have in your kitchen.

I love it and want everyone to be enjoying it, but I’ve noticed that most people have never heard of boza. Hence this post! In it, I’ll explain what the drink boza is, its history, how it’s made and what it tastes like.

What is boza?

Boza is a fermented drink that is native to the European regions we now call Turkey, the Caucuses and the Balkans. Made with millet, it’s gluten-free, dairy-free and, thanks to the fermentation, probiotic. It’s thick, fizzy, tangy and deeply satisfying.

What is the history of boza?

The first time the word ‘boza’ is recorded as being used to describe a fermented drink was the 14th century, but, incredibly, fermented millet drinks have been made since the 9th century BCE, meaning that a drink really similar to boza has been around for 3,000 years!

The heyday of boza was during the Ottoman Empire. A 17th-century traveller to Istanbul reported that the city housed 300 boza shops that employed over a thousand people!

There are still shops selling boza in Istanbul, one of the most famous being Vefa, which was founded in 1876 and is now run by the original owners great-great-grandchildren. You can see the shop here.

As well as being available in shops, boza has a long history of being sold by street vendors, who would wander the streets of Istanbul carrying boza in metal containers hung on milk pail-style apparatus. They had a very distinctive call. You can watch a short clip of one here.

If you’d like to read more about the environment in which boza-sellers worked, the main character in Orhan Pamuk’s 2014 novel A Strangeness in My Mind (a book that was shortlisted for the 2016 International Booker Prize) is a Turkish boza-seller.

What is boza made of?

The earliest records of boza-style fermented drinks used the grain millet. As the drink has travelled to different geographies and been influenced by changing crops, it is now often made with other grains such as corn or wheat.

I use millet in my own kitchen to make boza which creates a drink which is not only dairy-free but also gluten-free and lectin-free. Students of my boza course have also made the fermented drink with sorghum, amaranth and teff (as you can see below!).

Why should I make boza at home?

Boza is a simple, inexpensive drink to make and one that is exciting, delicious and probiotic. It’s great to have in the fridge when you want a healthy snack to turn to. In addition, if you’re looking to bring more probiotics into your life, making and consuming boza is a way that you can do this without relying on dairy, gluten, lectins or, importantly, expensive shop-bought beverages or tablets.

How do you make boza?

To make boza, hulled, cooked millet is mixed with yeast and left to ferment. The microbes doing the fermentation produce acids which make the drink tangy along with small amounts of alcohol.

What yeast can I use to make boza at home?

Some people use packets of commercial yeast in the boza-making process (and this is how boza is made in shops today).

Some experiment with sourdough starter, but I find this creates a drink that is too sour.

I choose to create my own starter full of natural yeasts using a small amount of cooked millet and some sugar. I then inoculate a bigger batch of cooked millet with this home-made starter, which ensures delicious results!

“I’m so impressed with this course. I’d never even heard of boza and now I’m addicted to it!” Deb, student of my course Boza: The Probiotic Millet Drink

What does boza taste like?

Boza is sweet, fizzy on the tongue, tangy and slightly sour. The cooked millet adds a creaminess to the drink too. You can vary the thickness (by adding more or less water) depending on your preference but it is generally a satisfyingly-thick drink which can also be eaten with a spoon.

Boza has generally become sweeter over time. Historically it was a more sour drink. My own method produces a drink that balances the sweet and sour flavours – I think the boza in my home is probably much less sweet than the boza you can currently buy in Istanbul.

What is the alcohol content?

The alcohol content of boza is low. In Turkey there is legislation saying that it cannot be greater than 2%. In my experience, when making boza at home, the alcohol content is much lower. General agreement states that home-made boza is less than 1% alcohol.

How is boza traditionally served?

Historically, boza has been served in the winter. This is because without refrigeration it was difficult to stop the drink over-fermenting in warm summer temperatures.

In addition, traditionally boza is seen as a warming and nourishing drink (even though it is served cold).

If you go to Istanbul today and buy boza, it will be served with roasted chickpeas and cinnamon on the top.

What are some other ways of serving boza?

In my home, boza is most often drunk (or eaten with a spoon) as a snack. My husband and son love it when they return home after a walk or an energetic trip out.

We consume it cold. In the summer, it’s really refreshing. In the winter, the thickness and fizzyness is very satisfying.

Here are some other ideas for serving boza:

• Top it with ground linseed or toasted nuts
• Use it as a yogurt alternative to top fruit or oatmeal/porridge
• Gently heat it up and sip it from a mug whilst warming your hands
• As a base for smoothies: Boza makes a brilliant non-dairy base for a probiotic smoothie. We like to add egg yolks, linseed, fruits or cocoa powder!
• Boza popsicles: Freeze boza in popsicle moulds for a delicious, healthy summer treat.

If you’d like to make boza in your own kitchen check out my step-by-step video course here

You’d be wrong.

Yes, the Scottish have been eating porridge for over a thousand years. But no, they didn’t use rolled oats.

Why didn’t the Scottish use rolled oats for their porridge?

Rolled oats are a modern invention. They’ve only been around since 1877. That was the year a machine that rolled oat grains into flakes was invented. This machine very quickly fell into the hands of what would become the Quaker oat company. Back then, Americans didn’t eat oats and in addition, breakfast cereals weren’t a ‘thing’.

The technique of rolling made the oats both more visually appealing and easier to cook and the Quaker company saw an opportunity. They registered the first trademark for a breakfast cereal (which they called oatmeal). The trademark included the name Quaker (chosen as a symbol of good quality and honest value) and the traditionally-dressed figure that we still see on Quaker oat packets today.

Quaker then went on, in 1882, to launch a ground-breaking marketing campaign that included running the first ever national magazine adverts for a breakfast cereal and delivering free trial-size samples of Quaker oats door-to-door.

It was a hit. Rolled oats were taken to heart by the US population and have been a staple at breakfast tables ever since. Quaker were (and still are) the leading manufacturer of oats (and their oat marketing campaign obviously paid off economically as they were bought by Pepsi in 2001 for $14 billion!)

But back to the Scots: If they’ve been eating porridge for over a thousand years, but rolled oats have only been around one hundred and fifty years, what did they do before?

To understand this, we need to dive briefly into oat history.

When our ancestors first discovered that oats were good to eat, they would have ground the grains between two stones to make a rudimentary flour. Later, in the Neolithic era (4,500-2,500 BCE) this technology was developed into the rotary quern. Two people, generally women, would work the quern, turning the handle manually. It was hard work (so much so that a recent study by Cambridge University has shown that Neolithic women had arm muscles 16% stronger than current Olympic rowers). The concentrated carbohydrate provided by the grain was obviously worth the effort!

Later still, stone mills were developed, and in oat-growing areas of Scotland (and England), these were often built alongside kilns so that the oats could be both toasted and ground efficiently.

The Scots ate these stone-ground oats – oat groats transformed into meal by manual grinding. In the UK, this type of oats is called oatmeal. Oatmeal was used to make porridge and oaten breads (plus all the other oat goodies that I hope to highlight in my forthcoming book).

Oatmeal comes in three grades: fine, medium and coarse. Traditionally, different dishes call for different types.

Here is fine oatmeal:

Here is medium oatmeal:

Differing definitions of the word oatmeal

I am from the UK and four years ago I started a podcast with an American. Pretty soon it became clear to me that the word oatmeal means one thing to people from the UK and another thing to Americans. Let’s clear that up.

In the US:

Oatmeal = oats (usually rolled) cooked with water/milk into a thick, soupy, warm dish.

In the UK:

Oatmeal = whole oats that have been stone-ground into a meal. These come in fine, medium and coarse grades. When oatmeal is (or in fact rolled oats are) cooked with water/milk into a thick, soupy, warm dish, it’s called porridge.

These days, even in areas where once whole communities only survived because of oatmeal, it is very hard to buy it on an English shopping street. Quaker has done such a good job of marketing rolled oats to the world that one might be mistaken in thinking that, along with oat-eating, rolled oats have been around for thousands of years.

But as Mornflake, a miller of oats in Cheshire, UK, since 1675 says on their website “Any serious porridge traditionalist will tell you that [porridge] should always be made with oatmeal. At the World Porridge-Making Championship you’d be turned away at the door with rolled oats!”

How will my porridge/oatmeal differ if I use oatmeal instead of porridge oats?

I’ve made porridge with both medium-grade oatmeal and rolled oats. The oatmeal version takes longer to cook, absorbs more water and has a more gritty texture than the rolled oats version. I like to make and serve it as the Scots did – cooked with plain water, a little salt added just before it’s done and then eaten with a small bowl of cream on the side to dip each spoonful into!

Want to try making your oatmeal/porridge the traditional Scottish way? With stone-ground oatmeal instead of rolled oats?

I’d suggest trying medium grade oatmeal.

If you are in the UK, you can find oatmeal through online suppliers relatively easily.

If you’re in the US, it takes a little more online work but, when I tried, a brief search threw up at least one supplier.

If you give it a go, next time you’re stirring the porridge pot ready for breakfast you’ll know that you’re truly stepping into the shoes of your Scottish ancestors and extending a tradition that’s been around for thousands of years, not one created one hundred and fifty years ago.

P.s If you love oats, you might like my course on the traditional Scottish oat ferment, sowans. Have a look by clicking on the picture below:

Looking back over what I wrote, I’m astounded: it’s an incredible amount of work!

Yet this is a fraction of what women did in the home just a few hundred years ago. Yes, there was ale, a lot of ale, but there was also making bread, dairying, looking after children, cleaning, tending to the garden and animals, ensuring everyone was clothed and much more.

And in pre-industrial households, it’s not as if the men didn’t work! Partnerships were very practical, both sexes depending on each other to subsist. Some tasks were generally undertaken by women (because of their physicality or nature), some by men.

The household was a unit of economic value. Society lived by that value.

That all changed with industrialisation.

At that moment, we began to outsource women’s and men’s household work. That outsourcing was mainly organised by men who started doing it ‘more efficiently’ and for a profit. House-holders then had to travel outside the home to work.

No more preparing breads with the best available ingredients, no more home-brewed ale, no more keeping animals, no more drinking fresh milk.

Fast forward a couple of hundred years and we now have mass-produced, foreign-flour bread with a list of additives as long as our arms, packaged in plastic (that ends up in our fish) and transported across countries in polluting lorries.

Instead of home-made ale we have homogeneous beers. We have wines made of grapes whose natural yeasts are killed before being inoculated with lab grown cultures. We have global brands of sugar-filled soft drinks.

And the Western world is full of disconnected, dissatisfied people with ever-decreasing health. I know that you know it’s not a coincidence.

And yet in our world at large, women who decide not to ‘work’, to instead stay at home and care for their children, tend a garden and make meals from fresh ingredients are lost members of society, literally deemed (until very recently in the US at least) unemployed because they don’t make an economic contribution.

I am thankful that there are women and men out there who are shouting as loud as they can about the value of home-making and I want to add to their call.

What can I do?

How can I amplify my voice and the voices of so many women, like me, who know the value of this work and want the world to realise what it’s ignoring, what it’s devaluing, what we’ve lost?

These are questions I ask myself every day.

As well as moving back to the UK this summer, my husband Rob and I have decided to home-school our son, Gabriel. One of the biggest factors in this decision has been how much we value the work that we both do in our home. We want to pass these important skills onto our son.

Yes, we want him to know how to read and write and yes, we want him to know that he can pursue the things that light him up, but we also want him to know what it takes to run a household sanely and healthily.

We don’t have a daughter; we’ll be passing what society deems women’s work on to our son. Because there’s a bigger issue here than how work was, is or should be divided between women and men. Taking responsibility for all the facets of personal and societal health within the home is important and society has devalued and pushed it away for too long. We want it to flow through the veins of our child notwithstanding his gender.

So that, as well as being able to turn his hand to making traditional ale at home, he will also know how to how to bake proper bread, how to feed himself well, how to work with the ingredients around him, and how to provide for himself.

In order to turn around the numerous problems our modern Western society has, we must begin to value again the life-giving, holistic work that has been carried out by women and men for thousands of years inside the four walls of the home.

p.s. If you’d like to have a go at the ale, I’m enthusiastically behind you. There’s an ale and brewing thread on the podcast patreon forum (you can join here for just $5 a month) where I can provide additional support and guidance.