Welcome to week 3 of Simmer Down, Yossi Langer’s weekly email about how busy people can cook from scratch every day without losing their minds, every Wednesday (but this week Thursday). If you want to subscribe, or to see the first two editions, go to heysimmerdown.com. Thanks for reading!
We’re Gonna Need a Bigger Oat
Homemade granola is a huge step up over what you can get in the supermarket—better tasting, cheaper, and better for you. I make a batch every other week that goes into some kind of breakfast almost daily. Making it is easy to work into a weekend morning because it comes together in 5 minutes, bakes in 45, and then just cools on the counter all day, and it neatly uses up remnants of miscellaneous grains, seeds, and nuts you’ve got sitting around. Best of all, you can experiment with flavors in a way I find rewarding.
You’re going to need rolled oats (not instant and not steel-cut), mix-ins like nuts, seeds, nut butters, maybe some grains, maybe some dried fruit, then oil, a sweetener, and some spices. But you can play with almost all those components and make it your own.
Add-ins: walnuts, cashews, almonds, peanuts; sesame seeds, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, flax seeds (go easy with these, though), chia seeds; buckwheat; nut butters; coconut flakes (controversial but I like them).
Sweeteners: honey makes for a more pliable final product; sugar makes it crunchier; brown sugar works well with cinnamon; maple syrup is rounded and probably my favorite. If you use a non-liquid sweetener you’ll need a little more oil to compensate. You can also leave it out altogether for a more savory granola, as in the Alison Roman recipe below.
Oil: olive oil gives savory notes that can complement the spice blend you use; coconut also increases crispness and works well as a binder. Neutral oil like grapeseed, avocado, or canola stays out of the way.
Spices: This is where you can really go nuts. Basic autumny warm spices work well (cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, allspice, or even just cinnamon alone is great), but I like to try things like ras-el-hanout or garam masala.
Dried fruit or chocolate: Raisins, figs, cherries, cranberries, pineapple, apricots, milk chocolate, white chocolate, peppermint bark—sky’s the limit here. To be honest, though, I usually leave these out completely. I’m just not into the texture.
Cooking temperature: 300° to 350° (150°–175° Celsius)—I like to go lower if I have more like an hour to bake it because it means I can stir less often without risking it getting too dark. But 350° works great, just stir it every 15 minutes or so.
There are even more variations than I’ve listed. Here are some recipes I’ve used or referred to when I was writing this up:
Recipe | Notes |
|---|---|
Standard traditional American granola at a hotter, faster oven | |
Brown sugar and maple syrup with coconut flakes | |
Incorporates almond butter and coconut oil | |
Many people cited this to me as their favorite | |
Small batch designed to cook quickly. | |
This is a bark, not a crumbly granola—like a big sheet of granola bar. | |
Savory granola with soy sauce and six kinds of seeds | |
Traditional granola with lots of dried fruit—apricots, figs, |
Unlike green sauce, there are not a million ways to use it granola. Most of the time it just gets sprinkled over yogurt with some fresh fruit, or sometimes added to oatmeal or overnight oats for an oats-two-ways meal. I have caught my kids eating it straight when I don’t have dessert around. It also makes a nice housewarming gift—put it in a mason jar with a ribbon.
Honey Bear Vinaigrette
Drawing by Isaac Langer.
Last week—after I made granola—I was left with about a teaspoon of honey in the bottom paws of a Costco plastic honey bear squeeze bottle. Barely worth squeezing or scraping out, but that night I had the bright idea of using it up by adding (roughly) 6 tablespoons olive oil, 2 tablespoons sherry vinegar and 2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar, some salt, a squeeze of lemon, and a dollop of mayonnaise to the bottle, then shaking vigorously to emulsify. Stored in the fridge it’s good for at least 3 or 4 salads. Just let it come to room temp (or run hot water over it) and shake to re-emulsify.
What a rush! I love not throwing food away. We don’t finish Costco-sized jars of honey every week, thank god, but the same principle should work for other vinaigrette ingredients: mustard, vinegar, mayo, soy, etc.
Some Things I Cooked This Week
I’ve been on the road in Philadelphia and New York, so in fact I didn’t cook much this week. As I type this I’m sitting on the Amtrak Northeast Regional train and munching on an apple fritter from Bleiler’s Amish food stand in Reading Terminal Market. I also had a deeply satisfying, endlessly replenished set of salatim (little Israeli salads) at Lazer Wolf in Philadelphia’s Fishtown neighborhood and an amazing roast chicken at Le Crocodile in Williamsburg. New York bagel places seem to have figured out that putting chili crisp on a bacon, egg, and cheese bagel is delicious. Also a classic PA tomato pie slice from PIZZA Shackamaxon and a pepper-and-onions slice from F&F Pizza in Carroll Gardens.
I did make Claire Saffitz’s apple cake and David Lebovitz’s honey ice cream for Rosh Hashanah before I left. L’shana tovah and a gut yontif!
Tomato pie slice from PIZZA Shackamaxon. Photo by Yossi Langer.
This Week’s Kitchen Song
A kitchen song is a song I like to listen to in my kitchen.
“Zoom 97” by Kurt Vile, in honor of my visit to my hometown. Listen to it while you’re making broccoli rabe.
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About Simmer Down
Simmer Down is a weekly newsletter about cooking real food at home for people who want to do that but think they’re too busy to, written by me, Yossi Langer, a busy person with kids in Los Angeles.
