How To Make Your Oatmeal Better Without Adding Any Ingredients

We hate to be the one to tell you this, but if you aren't toasting your oats, you're cooking oatmeal the wrong way. Perhaps because it is so intrinsically simple, oatmeal is one of those dishes that has been subjected to a great deal of experimentation. Folks have paired it with every type of jam, nut, syrup, and alternative milk in existence to try and gussy it up. And while there are loads of even simpler ways to make your oatmeal taste better — from adding a pinch of salt to making it with tea instead of water — its the method that requires no additional ingredients that can have the most profound effect.

When you put your oats in a pan to brown before combining them with your preferred liquid of choice, they take on a nutty, almost caramel-sweet quality that has been compared to the taste of cereal or granola. This is the Maillard reaction at work — a chemical reaction that takes place between sugars and proteins when exposed to heat. Humans have a long history of really digging foods that have undergone the big M, and this is surely no exception. The depth of flavor given to the oats is taken on by the entire silky ensemble that will be your morning bowl of oatmeal — a potentially transformative experience for those who have yet to try it.

While toasted oats may sound rather fancy, it genuinely couldn't be easier to give whatever oats you've got lying around the toasted treatment. Simply throw them in a pan, crank the heat to medium, and shimmy them around until that golden brown smell reaches your nose — you know what we mean. If you want to incorporate a spoonful of butter, we bet you won't be disappointed by the added richness. We'll do you one better and recommend you brown the butter with a cinnamon stick before adding the oats for some next-level flavor.

If the additional step just seems too daunting to overcome first thing in the morning, go ahead and pre-toast your oats if you like! You can do the whole kit and caboodle at once by spreading them out in a thin layer on a baking sheet, tossing them in the oven (let's say, 10 minutes at 350 degrees Fahrenheit), and returning them to their rightly airtight oat receptacle. Have some stewed apples prepped in the fridge and you'll have a gourmet-tasting breakfast in no time.