For most of human history, rendering fat was not a niche skill. It was simply what happened after butchering. Fat was carefully cut away, chopped, melted slowly and stored. Nothing was wasted. Fat meant calories. It meant flavour. It meant survival through winter.

Today, good-quality lard or tallow can be surprisingly expensive. Yet the process of rendering fat at home is simple, deeply traditional, and immensely satisfying. This guide will walk you gently through how to render pork lard and beef tallow using methods that would be entirely familiar to our ancestors.

Why Render Fat at Home?

To save money:

Eating ancestrally is touted as being expensive. That’s unsurprising when you realise that, for example, shop-bought tallow can cost upwards of £30 per kilogram (20USD per pound). Meanwhile, many butchers will sell (or even give away) back fat or suet for a fraction of that price – my experience is that home-rendered fat can cost as little as a tenth of the price of the shop version .

To get a real food product:

When we strive to eat real food, choosing vegetables and meat carefully, why would we ignore the quality of our fat? When we render lard or tallow at home we know where our fat has come from. We also get to potentially support a community food economy, buying from a farmer local to us.

To enjoy the delicious flavour:

Shop-bought lard or tallow is often made with fat that’s come through the industrial food chain. That, along with the fact that it is often hydrogenated (to extend its shelf life) means that it does not taste good. When you render fat at home, you get to use good fat and apply gentle heat only. The result is that it tastes amazing..

Cooking with home-rendered fat is a joy!

And finally, there is something less tangible but just as important — cooking with fat you’ve rendered yourself is a joy. Pastry, roast potatoes, cookies…they all take on a new dimension of wholeness when you know that you made the fat at home.

Understanding the Different Fats

Pork:

Pork fat, once rendered, becomes lard.

The fat from the pig’s back is most commonly used, though lard made with kidney fat — known as leaf lard — has traditionally been prized for delicate pastries because of its mild flavour. If you can access it, you can also render the fatty membrane surrounding the organs – this is called caul fat.

Beef:

Beef fat, once rendered, becomes tallow.

The fat from the cow’s back is most commonly used. The hard, crumbly fat around the kidneys of a cow can also be rendered. It is called suet when raw; once melted and strained, it is also tallow. Beef caul fat  (which surrounds the organs) can also be rendered.

Though rendered fats can vary greatly, lard is generally softer and whiter than tallow. Lard can be spread from the fridge, whereas if you want to use refrigerated tallow you’ll need to break off chunks.

How to Render Fat at Home (Traditional Methods)

At its heart, rendering is simply melting fat slowly enough that it liquefies without burning. The ideal temperature to maintain during the process is around 104–121°C (220–250°F).

As a rule of thumb, lower and slower is always safer than hotter and hurried.

The First Step: Chop Your Fat

The smaller you can get your pieces of fat, the easier it will be to get the lard or tallow out of them – the heat will reach all the parts more quickly. So start by chopping the raw fat into small pieces. This can be done by hand, with a hand/electric mincer or even with the grating blade of your food processor. This is the most time-consuming part of the whole process (trust me, it gets easier after this!) – here are some of my tips for this stage:

• If you’re doing this by hand, use a sharp knife!
• If your fat still has a lot of meat attached and it’s hard to clean it up, consider using the wet-rendering method below as opposed to the dry rendering method
• Chill or partially freeze your raw fat to help make it easier to mince
• You can use the cracklings (the left over pieces of fat) post-rendering (see below for recipes). If you’d like to this this, chop by hand rather than mince to stop them being too small.
• If your butcher/farmer has an electric mincer, you could ask them to pre-mince the fat for you!

Once your fat is chopped, Two distinct methods of rendering are common. Choose the one that suits you based on your needs:

The Dry Rendering Method

With dry rendering, the finely chopped fat is placed directly into a heavy pot, oven dish or slow cooker and heated gently without added water. As it melts, you pour off the liquid fat periodically before returning the in-progress fat pieces to the heat.

You can do this process in the oven (at around 104C/220F to 121C/250F) or in a slow cooker (including the Instant Pot on its slow cooker setting).

The rendering process should take around six to nine hours, depending on the size of the fat and the temperature of your heat source. Return to the pan every 60-90 minutes and pour off the liquid fat. When the cracklings are small, crisp and give up little fat, you are finished.

Check my full step-by-step guide to how to render lard in a slow cooker, which walks through the process in detail – its methods can be applied to an oven too.

The Wet Rendering Method

Wet rendering differs from the dry method in that you add a small amount of water to the pot that contains the fat. As it heats gently, the water prevents scorching and helps separate any impurities from the mix.

Just like dry rendering, this process can be done in the oven (with a lidded pot) or in a slow cooker (including the Instant Pot on its slow cooker setting) To wet render fat, pour half a cup of water into your pot, then add the chopped fat. Turn on the heat to between 104C/220F to 121C/250F and allow the fat to melt slowly.

Depending on the size of your fat pieces and the temperature of your heat source, this process may take six to nine hours. As the hours roll on, check the progress by looking at the size of the fat pieces – once they are much smaller (less than a third the size they were), strain off the liquid into a large bowl and allow it to cool. It will separate – the fat rising to the top and the water remaining at the bottom. Once cool, place the bowl in the fridge – here it will solidify into a firm, pale layer of fat above any remaining water.

One solid, lift off the layer of fat and turn it over. The bottom will potentially have impurities and some remains of the water clinging to it. Scrape this off so that you are left with a surface of clean, dry fat.

Should I dry or wet render?

I am often asked this question. Here are considerations to think about when deciding:

• Dry rendering has fewer stages – you don’t need to cool, refrigerate and then scrape the result. Wet rendering generally takes me two days, I can complete dry rendering in one.
• Dry rendering is better if you have ‘clean’ fat that isn’t dotted with pieces of meat still attached – as these would create impurities that would remain in the fat.
• With dry rendering, it’s easier to tell when the process is complete – the liquid you can pour off will reduce substantially.
• Wet rendering does not require you to return to the mixture every 60 – 90 minutes; you can turn it on and forget about it for at least four to six hours, and, when you get used to how long it takes for you, you could potentially leave it longer.
• Wet rendering is better if you have fat that is dotted with pieces of meat – the impurities will get moved to the water and discarded.

How To Know When It’s Done

There is no hard and fast rule for this. Every batch of fat is different; the size of the pieces makes a big difference and the temperature of your heat source impacts the timing too. As you render regularly you will begin to learn the cues and what works for you.

The biggest indicator is the size and colour of the fat pieces. As the fat renders, they will become smaller – potentially reducing to a third or a quarter of their original size. They will also, particularly with dry rendering, turn golden.

If you are dry rendering, the amount of liquid you can pour off in every check will decrease substantially. When I dry render, there is always a moment of diminishing returns – do not risk scorching the fat chasing the final spoonful!

Storing Rendered Fat

Well rendered fat should last well even left out on the counter.

But, after a decade of rendering fat, I still do not choose to leave mine on the counter.  Why? Because rendering fat is a commitment of money, energy and time and even a small chance of it going bad is not something I want to happen!

When rendering day is done, I keep one container of lard or tallow in my fridge and freeze the rest. ‘Clean’ fat (fat in which you can’t see impurities – they will generally settle on the bottom of the container) will last two to three weeks in the fridge and many years in the freezer.

How to know if it’s gone bad

If you see mould on your fat, discard it. Other than that, it may go ‘rancid’ (off). You can judge this by the small – rancid fat smells unmistakably unpleasant — sharp and stale. I very rarely have fat go rancid, but if you’re in doubt, discard it.

Cooking With Rendered Fat

I use home-rendered fat in my kitchen many times a day. Here are my suggestions:

• Spread lard on bread and top it with salt
• Fry bread in lard or tallow
• Dot lard over a tray of vegetables, add some spices/herbs and then bake them in the oven
• Use lard in enriched-dough breads, in place of butter
• Use tallow or lard to fry vegetables, meat or pancakes
• Lard is great to grease bread baking tins, cake moulds, cookie sheets and gratin dishes
• Melt tallow and lard and, using a pastry brush, paint them over butternut squash slices before the oven
• Make Traditional Scottish Oatcakes using the traditional lard or tallow!

What to Do With the Leftover Solid Fat (Cracklings)

I love cracklings, viewing them a gift, not a by-product. Eat them warm with salt. Scatter them over soups or scrambled eggs. Fold them into bread. My Italian-inspired Pane con Ciccioli is a beautiful example of turning these small, crisp pieces into something celebratory.

You can also make a delicious spread from them by checking my recipe: 7 ways to use lard (including a crackling spread recipe).

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between suet and tallow?

Suet is the raw kidney fat from cattle or sheep. Once rendered and purified, it becomes tallow.

Can you use suet without rendering?

Yes, suet is traditionally used in British ‘puddings’ (steamed dishes) without rendering.

Why is some rendered fat yellow?

Fat can vary in colour. Beef fat is more yellow that pig fat. Grass-fed animals often produce yellower fat due to carotenoids in pasture. The breed and season also influence colour.

How long does rendered fat last?

Years in the freezer. Many months in the refrigerator. Room temperature storage depends entirely on cleanliness and dryness.

Can I render fat in a slow cooker?

Yes. A slow cooker provides steady, gentle heat and is an excellent tool for rendering lard or tallow.

If I want to use rendered fat in cosmetics/toiletries, how should I render it?

If you are planning to use your home-rendered fat in home-made toiletries or cosmetics, it’s best to wet render it. This method will help removed impurities better than dry rendering. Many people who wet-render for this purpose add salt to the fat/water mix (to pull our more impurities) and, once the finished fat has solidified, render it a second and even third time with more water/salt to cleanse it further.

Where can I get good-quality fat as an economical price?

The best place to start looking for good-quality fat is a local farmer. They may not be used to people wanting fat; tell them what you’d like, how much you’d like and what you’re going to use it for. If you don’t yet have a local farmer network and would like to build one, visit local farmers markets, talk to friends and ask at local shops.

Can I eat the fat off the top of my broth?

Yes. Broth, particularly beef broth, when cooled will be topped with a layer of fat. The easiest way to access this is to put your strained broth, still in the bowl, in the fridge. The top fat layer will harden and, the next day, you can carefully remove it. This fat will not last as long as ‘properly’ rendered fat (as it has impurities and liquid in it), but can be kept in the fridge for four to five days.

I save my drippings, isn’t this rendered fat?

Yes, it is. Any fat that drains from bacon, joints or burgers is technically rendered fat. Do scrape your pans after cooking – the fat is often infused with cooking ingredients (salt and herbs/spices) and it delicious. Keep it in the fridge and use it to spread on bread or fry some vegetables.

How can I learn more about rendering fat?

Ancestral Kitchen Podcast has an episode dedicated to rendering fat: How to Render Fat at Home (With Q&A)
If you’d like to know which fats I cook with and why, there is also this Ancestral Kitchen Podcast episode, The Fats We Love, The Fats We Leave

You might also like:

How To Render Lard in the Slow Cooker
7 Ways to Use Lard (Including a Lard Crackling Spread Recipe)
How To Make Lardo (Italian Cured Pig Fat) at Home

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 (around four times the volume by weight).
• 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.

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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.

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I make 100% wholegrain sourdough rye loaves in my kitchen every week. The flavour is deep, rich and tangy and the breads – which I can slice and make into sandwiches – are always finished too quickly! That’s where these sourdough rye crackers, made again with 100% wholegrain rye flour, save the day. I can make up a batch at the weekend and they will keep all week, filling holes in my families nutrient-dense food when they are needed.

Simple ingredients

The recipe is deceptively simple. It can be made with a fresh sourdough starter or with sourdough discard. Aside from the flour and starter, all your need is a bit of fat and some salt/flavourings.

For the crackers you see in this post, I used rye flour that I freshly-milled at home using rye berries from Grand Teton Ancient Grains. Freshly-milled flour is the icing on the cake when it comes to these crackers, but they can easily be made with pre-milled wholegrain rye flour too.

By hand or food processor

I mix the dough by hand. It’s not difficult and I’ll walk you through the steps. If you prefer to use a food processor, it’s even quicker!

I cut these into rounds using a 3-inch (7.6cm) cookie cutter. There’s no need for you to do this though, you can score the dough manually into squares before cooking or even bake as one whole sheet of cracker (it’s fun to break this by hand when it’s crispy!)

Wholegrain Rye Sourdough Crackers Recipe

• Makes: 28-30 3-inch crackers
• Prep time: 25 minutes (plus overnight rest)
• Baking time: 12 minutes

Ingredients:

• 100 g (approx 1 cup) wholegrain rye flour
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp caraway seeds
• 50 g lard (can be substituted with butter or olive oil)
• 100 g (approx half cup) sourdough starter, can be discard
• 1- 4 tbsp water, if needed

Method:

• In a bowl, mix the wholegrain rye flour, salt and caraway seeds.
• Measure in the lard (or butter) chopping it into small pieces as you do so.
• Using your fingers, rub the fat into the dry ingredients until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.
• Measure in the sourdough starter (or discard), mix this in well – the dough should start to come together as you do so.
• Depending on the hydration of your sourdough starter, your dough may need more water to adhere together well. You want your dough a little sticky, this way it’ll crack less when you roll it out. Make a judgement and add more water if necessary. (When I make these crackers using freshly-ground rye and my 70% hydration wholegrain rye sourdough starter, I generally need to add 2-4 tablespoons of water to get a good dough.)
• Bring the dough together into a ball and wrap it or place it inside a sealed container before putting it in the fridge overnight.
• The next day, when you’re ready to make the crackers, preheat your oven to 180°C/375°F.
• Liberally coat your work surface and rolling pin with wholegrain rye flour.
• Uncover your dough and, using a knife, chop it in half.

• Gently work the first half into a ball, place it on your floured work surface and, using your palm, push it down into a circle.
• Sprinkle the top of the circle with wholegrain rye flour and roll the dough out. You are aiming for a thickness of 2 mm or under. Turn the dough often and liberally apply extra flour to avoid it sticking to your surface or your pin.
• When the dough has a thickness of 2 mm or under cut circles of cracker out from it and place them on a baking sheet/sheet pan.

• Gather up the offcuts, add them to the second half of the dough and repeat the process until you have used all of your dough.
• Bake the crackers act 180°C/375°F for approximately 12 minutes. Close to the end of the time, keep a careful eye on the crackers, removing the ones from the edge of the sheet pan if they start to look as if they will burn.
• Remove the crackers to a cooling rack and allow them to come to room temperature before enjoying.

FAQS

How should I store these rye sourdough crackers?

Because of their thinness, these crackers are dry. They will store well in an airtight container for up to 5 days.

How do you like to eat these sourdough rye crackers?

It’s hard to resist eating them straight from the cooling rack! Thankfully, making a batch of 30, there’s usually loads left over after this. They are great spread with butter, eaten with cream cheese or as a simple side to a salad. I love the flavour of avocado with rye, so will often top these crackers with sliced avocado or avocado mashed with olive oil.

What’s the best fat to use in these crackers?

I like to use lard, which I home render, for these crackers. You can easily substitute unsalted butter.

Can I use olive oil instead of lard/butter to make these rye sourdough crackers?

Yes, olive oil is possible. If you’d like to use it and it at the same time as a sourdough starter.

Do these crackers work with freshly-milled rye flour?

Yes, I make them with freshly-milled rye flour ground in my counter-top Mockmill. If you don’t have one of these, shop-bought wholegrain rye flour works well.

Can I use sourdough discard to make these crackers?

Yes, these crackers work with sourdough discard as well as fresh sourdough starter. Your starter does not need to be wholegrain rye – you could use a spelt, wheat or gluten-free starter with the crackers.

Do I need to/can I roll these crackers out using parchment/greaseproof paper?

Parchment/greaseproof paper can be used instead of the flour to create a surface upon which to roll out the dough. If you then struggle to move the crackers from this, you can lift the entire sheet of paper onto your baking sheet/tray. I prefer to use rye flour to stop the dough from sticking to my surface or pin as it is simpler.

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Einkorn is the ancient grain of all ancient grains. It is the oldest cultivated variety of wheat and also, genetically, the simplest. It’s remained unchanged for over 10,000 years meaning that, when we cook with it in our modern kitchens, we really are bringing to life a grain of our ancestors.

The word einkorn comes from the German language, meaning single corn. It’s grains are small, helping me see why, when I lived in Italy, I knew this grain as ‘farro piccolo’.

I am lover of ancient grains – over 10 years of making sourdough and I’ve never baked with modern wheat. Having explored einkorn’s cousin, spelt, so deeply, I was really keen to metaphorically step back in time and play with the ‘original’ ancient grain!

So, when I was gifted a bag of einkorn berries by Grand Teton Ancient Grains, I couldn’t wait to use them.

Having previously developed a sourdough bread recipe with their emmer berries, I wanted to try something a bit different. My son loves chocolate, particularly in cookies, but, he can’t eat egg. This means that a lot of cookie recipes out there are a no-go for us. I knew I wanted to get him involved in the actual making – being in our kitchen is part of his home-school life – so chocolate cookies seemed like a great option. I’d keep it simple, avoid eggs and develop the recipe with him.

These crunchy wholegrain einkorn chocolate chip cookies came out of our third kitchen session. This recipe was the clear winner – the addition of milk kefir making the resulting treat delightfully airy and crisp.

Why wholegrain?

These einkorn chocolate chip cookies are made from wholegrain. A couple of years ago I invested in a Mockmill counter-top grain grinder and I freshly-grind whole berries in my own kitchen. This practice has transformed the flavour of my grain products, saved me money and is connecting me more deeply with my food.

A lot of the nutrition of grains is in the bran. If you use white flour, this has been stripped out. Store-bought wholegrain flour often sits on the shelf, losing vital nutrients. By freshly-grinding whole berries, you get as much nutrition and flavour as you can.

Let’s talk about the sugar

The sugar in these cookies is minimal. Having been away from processed food for years, my family find they don’t need (or want) the same levels of sweetness in their food. The sugar amount in this recipe is to their taste. If you’d like them a bit sweeter, feel free to increase the sugar.

…and, of course, the chocolate

The chips in these chocolate chip cookies are hand-chopped from a bar of 90% cocoa chocolate. We love the depth that this level of cocoa brings. If you prefer your chocolate sweeter (or want an overall more sweet cookie) choose a chocolate with a lower cocoa percentage.

Wholegrain Einkorn Chocolate Chip Cookies

Makes 8 cookies
Preparation time: 25 minutes
Cooking time: 12 minutes

Ingredients:

145g wholegrain einkorn flour
1 tsp baking powder
60g salted butter
25g soft dark brown sugar
28g dark chocolate, cut into chips
20–25g milk kefir
For the topping:
½ tsp cinnamon
2 tsp dark brown sugar

Method:

• Preheat your oven to 180°C/375°F and prepare a baking tray/sheet, lining it with baking/parchment paper
• Measure the einkorn flour and baking powder into a mixing bowl and combine well.
• Cream together the butter and sugar.
• Put the creamed butter and sugar into the bowl with the einkorn and baking powder and, using your fingers, combine into a breadcrumb-style mix.
• Stir in the dark chocolate chips.
• Bring the mix together into a dough using the milk kefir to help bind. Start with the less milk kefir and, checking the consistency, add more if needed.
• When the dough is well combined, break off a small amount to make each cookie. I aim for each portion to be 30g.
• Squeeze this piece of dough a few times forming it into a ball. Place the ball onto your lined baking tray and flatten with the palm of your hand. Shape the dough into a 2 inch circle, pinching the outside edges together if they begin to crack.
• Repeat this process for the remaining dough, ending up with eight cookies.
• In a smaller bowl, for the topping, mix together the cinnamon and dark brown sugar.
• Sprinkle this topping generously over the cookies before placing them in the oven.
• Bake for 10 to 12 minutes, watching towards the end of the cooking time to make sure the edges don’t burn.
• When the cookies look golden brown and feel hard on outside, remove them to a cooling rack.

FAQs

I don’t have a grinder, can I use store-bought wholegrain einkorn flour?

Yes these chocolate chip einkorn cookies will work just as well with store bought einkorn flour as they do with freshly-ground flour. Just remember to choose wholegrain, not white, flour.

How long do these cookies keep for?

These cookies will keep for 3 to 4 days in an airtight container

Where did you get your grain grinder?

I purchased my grain grinder from Mockmill. You can read about my experience here.

Can I use other grains for these chocolate chip cookies?

Yes! I have also made these with freshly-ground wholegrain spelt flour and I think they would also work really well with wholegrain emmer flour, which has a naturally sweet flavour.

Can I use different chocolate?

You do not have to use 90% cocoa chocolat}e for this recipe. Feel free to use a darker, or lighter, chocolate or even a flavoured one.

I don’t have milk kefir, can I use something else?

The milk kefir works with the baking powder to make these cookies light and airy. You can buy milk kefir in many stores, if you don’t make it yourself. If you can’t find milk kefir, another acidic, creamy option – like yoghurt – would work.

Thank you so much to Grand Teton Ancient Grains for sponsoring this post, allowing me to develop, test and write up this recipe.

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I am used to baking with ancient grains. I have cupboards full of non-wheat cereals: spelt, rye, buckwheat, millet, einkorn…I bake with them all every week. But, up until recently, I’d always been a bit daunted by baking with emmer. I’d heard that it was difficult to handle, that it made a dough that felt like wet sand and that it wouldn’t rise.

And so, when I was gifted a big bag of emmer by regenerative, organic farm Grand Teton Ancient Grains, I knew it was time to take on the challenge of creating a good sourdough emmer loaf.

At first, I tried the same techniques I use for spelt. I’m good with spelt (I’ve written a book on it). But my spelt recipes didn’t work with emmer. I could make a passable loaf using the same techniques I use with spelt, but the dough was so sticky and the rise I was able to obtain was not great.

I knew I had to try a different approach. After failed attempts with autolysing the flour (that is mixing flour and water and leaving it overnight to ‘settle’) and failed attempts at intensive kneading, I decided to turn to the techniques that I use to make sourdough rye bread.

Using these techniques, designed for the low-gluten rye grain, was a revelation with emmer. The loaves bloomed – the mixing was a dream and they rose well in the oven.

Tasting this sourdough loaf made with emmer was a revelation. The flavour is like nothing else; it is incredibly sweet and also fragrant and nutty. It leaves your mouth happy in a way that I’ve not experienced with other ancient grains.

As you might guess, this loaf is now regular part of my ancient grains sourdough baking!

If, in the past, you’ve tried and failed to make a sourdough loaf with emmer or you’ve read that it’s a difficult grain to handle in breadmaking, this recipe will dispel all your fears. It’s simple, it’s foolproof and it makes the most amazingly flavoured ancient grain sourdough.

First of all, let’s dive a little bit into emmer:

What is emmer?

Emmer is an ancient grain, that is, a cereal grain that has been used for thousands of years and comes to us, in the modern era, virtually unchanged genetically.

It is much lower in gluten than wheat, and, as an ancient grain, many people who have problems with wheat find they are able to digest emmer – especially when it’s made into sourdough – without problems.

For answers to more questions about emmer, including its similarities to and differences from other ancient grains, see my FAQ section below.

Is emmer good for sourdough?

Yes, emmer makes the most amazingly-flavoured sourdough. It is not, however, easily to get good results from emmer if you apply the same bread-making techniques that would be applied to wheat. A different process is needed. To get good results from emmer, I found it best to employ the same techniques I use when making rye bread – that is no kneading, a pre-ferment and a very high-hydration dough. When treated this way emmer makes a glorious sourdough bread with flavour that is unbeatable. My recipe will show you how!

The practical stuff:

This bread needs to be started the night before you wish to bake it. At that time, you create a pre-ferment along with soaking the sunflower seeds. Both of these are left on the counter overnight before mixing the main dough in the morning and baking it around lunchtime.

You will need a loaf pan and ideally it will have a lid. This bread comes out best for me in my 1kg/2lb Emile Henry ceramic loaf pan. If you don’t have a lid you can improvise one by tenting your pan with aluminium foil.

I make this loaf using emmer berries from ancientgrains.com, ground at home in my Mockmill. If you are in the UK you can source whole emmer grains from Hodmedods. If you don’t have a mill at home, using pre-ground emmer flour for work fine

Although this bread is 100% wholegrain emmer flour, it will work with sourdough starter made of any flour. I would not be without my rye sourdough starter (find advice on how to create one of these here).

Seeded Wholegrain Emmer Sourdough

Ingredients:

For the pre-ferment:

230g wholegrain emmer flour

230g water

45g sourdough starter (can be any grain)

For the main dough:

320g wholegrain emmer flour

9g salt

120g water

100g pre-soaked sunflower seeds

Method:

The night before you want to bake:

The sunflower seeds need to be soaked:

• Put them into a bowl and cover them with ample water, before leaving them on the counter overnight.

Make the pre-ferment:

• Combine the water and sourdough starter, mixing well. Stir this mixture into the flour.
• Clean the sides of the bowl and flatten the top of the mixture with wet spatula.
• Cover the bowl tightly with a plate or some clingfilm/plastic wrap.
• Leave this mix overnight in a warm place – when I created this loaf the daytime temperature of my house was 24C/68F; try to find a space that’s somewhere between 20C/68F and 24C/75F.

The morning of the bake:

• Retrieve the mixture that’s been pre-fermenting overnight. It should be visibly expanded and smell fermented The bowl should sound hollow when you knock the side of it and you may also see tiny pin holes on the top of the surface. If you’re unsure whether the mix is ready, you can dig a spoon into it – you should find honeycomb-style network of holes. If you are in any doubt that the mixture is ready, return it to your warm place and check it again in an hour or two.
• When you are ready to proceed, drain and rinse the sunflower seeds, before pouring them into the bowl that contains the pre-ferment.
• Add the water to this and stir until well combined.
• Stir the salt into the flour.
• Add the flour/salt to the liquidy pre-ferment, stirring until there is no loose flour and the mixture is well combined.
• Using a wet spatula, clean down the sides of the bowl before pressing down and smoothing the top of the dough.
• Cover the bowl tightly with a plate or clingfilm/plastic wrap.

• Leave in a warm place to ferment. In my kitchen, at 24C/75F, I leave this two hours.
• Prepare a loaf pan for the bread, greasing and flowering the inside.
• When the dough is ready (it will be bigger, smell active, and be airy) it’s time to get it into the pan. I find the best way to do this is to use a wet spatula and scoop portions of the dough out at a time, dropping them into my pan. Once I have all the dough, I wet my spatula again and shape/smooth the top of the loaf.
• Cover the loaf pan. If your pan doesn’t have a lid you can tent the pan with aluminium foil.
• Leave in a warm place to ferment. In my kitchen, 24C/75F, I leave this for an hour and a half.

• About 20 minutes before you judge the bread to be ready, preheat your oven to 210C/410C.
• When the loaf is ready (it will be bigger and may have tiny pin holes on the surface), ensure the lid is well fitting and place inside your preheated oven.
• Cook the bread at 210C/410F for 25 minutes and then reduce the temperature to 190C/375F. My loaf (cooked in a Emile Henry ceramic baker) takes a further 30 minutes at this temperature.
• The bread will be done when it registers 95C/200F at its centre with a probe thermometer. If you don’t have one of these, you can judge doneness based on the colour of the crust and the loaf sounding hollow when you tap it on the bottom.
• Remove the bread from its pan to a cooling rack and leave it to cool completely before cutting.

This seeded wholegrain emmer sourdough will keep at least four or five days in a bread bag or tin. If you are used to spelt loaves going stale after two or three days, you will be pleasantly surprised at the keeping qualities of emmer.

FAQs

What’s the difference between emmer and spelt?

Both emmer and spelt are ancient grains. They both have wheat-like qualities (as does their sister ancient grain, einkorn). Their similarities are shown by what the Italians call them. In Italian, einkorn, emmer and spelt are all part of the ‘farro’ family; einkorn is ‘farro monococco’, emmer is ‘farro dicocco’ and spelt is ‘farro spelta’. Emmer is genetically more complex than einkorn but simpler than simpler than spelt.

From the bakers point of view, emmer handles very differently to spelt. It stretches much more, but with its lower gluten content it is harder to use the methods of conventional wheat bread-making. This is why my recipe uses the techniques I would normally apply to very low-gluten doughs, such as those made with rye.

Does emmer contain gluten?

Yes, emmer does contain gluten. Therefore if you are coeliac you shouldn’t eat it. If, however, you have non-specific gluten intolerance you may find, as others do, that eating sourdough made with ancient grains such as emmer does not cause you problems.

What’s the difference between wheat and emmer?

Emmer is an ancient grain, a cereal that our ancestors have been using for thousands of years. Modern wheat that we buy in shops today is a product of an intensive selective breeding programme in the 1960s. This was designed to increase wheat yield, with no concern for flavour or health benefits. When you choose to bake with emmer you are choosing a grain that has sustained ancestors for many years and has not been messed with as has modern wheat.

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Thank you so much to Grand Teton Ancient Grains for sponsoring this post, allowing me to develop, test and write up this recipe.

Øllebrød is my new favourite breakfast! Who would’ve believed that such a complex-flavoured, adaptable, moreish dish could come from the combination of some stale rye bread and half a can of ale?! Pair it with a few flavourings (which I’ll share with you below) it’s like creating magic in your breakfast bowl.

What is Øllebrød?

Øllebrød is a oatmeal-style dish from Denmark that pairs previously-baked rye bread with beer to create a warm and hearty porridge. The earliest references to it are from the Middle Ages and, in its traditional form, it was a simple, frugal dish that provided nourishment from readily-available staples.

Why bread and beer?

Before industrialisation, communities depended on the crops that grew around them. Rye was a grain that worked well in Denmark, hence it was used to make bread. As firing an oven is quite an expense, this bread was often made in large batches and designed to be kept. As these breads aged, creative home cooks found ways to bring them to life, including this delicious porridge øllebrød.

 With bread-making comes beer-making – providing both was an unquestionable part of the household duties of women for centuries. And if we go back beyond a couple of hundred years, beer (or ale) was a day-to-day drink; given to the whole family at meals.

Bread and beer would have been part of our ancestors lives. Combining them into a daily dish just made sense.

A traditional version:

I first read about øllebrød in Alex Hely-Hutchinson’s book 26 Grains. Her version, like many of the øllebrød recipes you’ll find online, modernises the dish, leaving out the beer and adding sweeteners, fruit and spices. Whilst øllebrød does taste good this way, I love adding beer – it gives the dish a deep, rich flavour that is so distinctively different.

In this recipe, half of the liquid used is beer (I’ve used a stout as the flavours combine so well, but you could use any beer). To balance the flavours, I’ve also used a very small amount of sweetener. Taste your own øllebrød before it’s done and add more if you prefer it sweeter.

I make 100% wholegrain rye sourdough rye bread at home every week (my methods are in my course Rye Sourdough Bread: Mastering the Basics) and use the last slices of the loaf to make øllebrød. Sometimes, though, I am so keen to have the porridge that I’ll use fresh bread, or even make a loaf especially. It’s not important whether your bread is old or new, the flavour will be good with both.

You could use shop-bought rye bread, but, as with all industrially-made foods, the flavour won’t be as special.

My favourite spices and flavourings are below, but there are so many options to chose from. Using my suggestions and your imagination, you can make the dish a different experience every time.

Øllebrød needs to be started the night before you want to eat it by soaking the bread in beer and water. I suggest doing this in the saucepan that you intend to cook it in, saving washing up!

Traditional Danish Øllebrød

Serves: 3

Time to soak: overnight

Time to cook: 20 minutes

Ingredients:

250g rye bread, sourdough is best

300g stout (or any beer/ale)

300g water

1/8 tsp salt

1 tsp dark sugar

Spices/flavourings (I often change these up, but like this combination):

1 tsp cinnamon

1/8 tsp vanilla seeds

Zest of 1/3 of a lemon (c.1/2 tsp)

You could also experiment with orange zest/juice, caraway, cardamom, star anise and more!

Method:

The night before you want to eat øllebrød:

• Break the bread into chunks around 2 cms and place them in a saucepan.
• Pour over the beer and the water and stir to combine.
• Cover and leave on the counter overnight.

In the morning:

• Add the salt, sugar and spices to the bread mixture.
• Put the pan onto the stove on a medium-high heat, stirring frequently until you start to see it bubble.
• Turn the heat down to low and cook for 20 minutes, stirring regularly to avoid it sticking to the bottom of your pan.
• When the porridge is smooth, taste it for seasoning, adding more salt, sweetener and/or spices if you would like.
• Serve into bowls, add any desired toppings and eat straight away.

Serving suggestions:

• Øllebrød is great served simply with crushed nuts/seeds and some yogurt or cream (or my favourite, ghee!)
• If you’d like to, toasting nuts before topping øllebrød with them brings more flavour.
• Fresh, seasonal fruit is a nice option.
• For a special treat you could add honey or maple syrup; my son likes it if I infuse cardamom pods for 15 minutes in a 50/50 warmed honey/water solution and pour that over the top of his øllebrød.

FAQs

Can I use new rye bread?

Yes, I often use freshly-made rye bread to make øllebrød. I ends up being slightly more liquidy than if I’d used stale, dry bread, but you can extend the cooking period if you prefer it thicker.

Can I use standard rye?

Yes, you don’t have to use home-made sourdough rye. You can use yeasted rye or shop-bought rye bread. Bread with seeds in will work too, but your porridge will not be as smooth as a non-seeded loaf.

Can I use other breads?

Yes, I often make øllebrød with sourdough spelt bread. When I do this, I prefer to replace the beer with cider. The flavour is wonderful!

Do I have to use alcohol?

No! Øllebrød was traditionally made with beer, but you could soak the bread in water instead. A lot of modern recipes do this.

Can I use non-alcoholic beer?

Yes! Non alcoholic stout or beer works well for this recipes.

I don’t like stout, can I use another beer?

Yes, you can use any type of beer, ale, cider (even home-brewed ancestral ale!). The flavour will change based on the type of drink you use.

What other flavourings go well with øllebrød?

I have used lemon zest, cinnamon and vanilla in the recipe, but often use other spices. Caraway works very well with the deep rye flavours, as does star anise and cardamom. Lots of recipes online use orange juice and zest.

You might also like:

Russian Bread Kvass

Wholegrain Rye Sourdough Bread: Mastering the Basics (podcast episode)

How to Make Fermented Oats

And, if you want to get my go-to recipe for 100% wholegrain rye sourdough bread, plus tips for making sourdough rye at home, go here.

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