Steel-Cut Oatmeal with Maple Syrup and Cream

January. The deep cold. The kind of cold that isn't weather anymore — it's a condition, a state of being, the natural order asserting itself over everything humans have built. It was minus eight on Tuesday morning, which in Vermont is not an emergency, it's a Tuesday. The woodstove goes all day. The furnace runs all night. The pipes don't freeze because David had them wrapped when he was here in October, a kindness he performed without asking and I accepted without thanking, because that's how Bergstrom men handle acts of love: silently, on both ends.

I made oatmeal. Not the instant kind — I'd sooner eat the cardboard box it comes in. Real oatmeal. Steel-cut oats, cooked low and slow for thirty minutes with a pinch of salt, served with maple syrup and cream. This is the breakfast that my mother made every winter morning of my childhood, and it's the breakfast I make now, standing at the same stove, looking out the same window at the same frozen landscape that hasn't changed in a hundred years except that the maples are taller and I'm shorter.

There's a meditation in oatmeal. You stand at the stove and stir. Not constantly — every few minutes, enough to keep it from sticking. And while you stir you look out the window and the world is white and still and the only sound is the oats bubbling and the stove ticking and the dog breathing on the floor behind you, and for ten minutes you're not thinking about anything except the next stir, the next moment, the next breath. Thoreau would have understood. Thoreau would have written twelve pages about it. I'll keep it to one paragraph.

Helen is home more now — down to two days a week at the hospital, and the house is adjusting. We've developed a new routine: I make breakfast, she makes lunch, we alternate dinner. The kitchen isn't mine alone anymore. This requires diplomacy. Helen organizes the spice shelf by alphabet. I organize it by frequency of use. We have reached a détente: her system from A through M, my system from N through Z. This is marriage in the forty-first year: half the alphabet each, and no encroachment.

The blog's been quiet this week — January isn't a busy time for food writing, which is wrong, because January is when you need food writing most. When the world is frozen and dark and the holidays are over and the next good thing on the calendar is March, a man needs a bowl of oatmeal and a reason to stand at the stove. That's what I try to give them. A reason. A bowl. A morning in Vermont.

Frost is asleep in his spot. The fire is going. The oatmeal is done. January in Vermont. We abide.

The oatmeal that morning wasn’t planned — it was just what January asked for, and what the house needed: something slow, something warm, something that gave me a reason to stand at the stove while Helen reorganized the spices and Frost held his spot and the fire did its work. Steel-cut oats take thirty minutes, which is the right amount of time for a January morning in Vermont. Here’s how I made it.

Prep Time: 5 minutes | Cook Time: 30 minutes | Total Time: 35 minutes | Servings: 2

Ingredients

1 cup steel-cut oats
3 cups water
1 cup whole milk
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
2 tablespoons pure maple syrup, plus more for serving
3 to 4 tablespoons heavy cream, for serving
Pinch of ground cinnamon (optional)

Instructions

Bring to a simmer. Combine the water, milk, and salt in a medium heavy-bottomed saucepan over medium heat. Bring just to a low simmer, watching carefully so the milk does not scorch.
Add the oats. Stir in the steel-cut oats. Reduce the heat to low and cook uncovered, stirring every 4 to 5 minutes to prevent sticking, for 25 to 30 minutes, until the oats are tender and the porridge has thickened to your liking. It will thicken further as it rests.
Finish and season. Remove from heat. Stir in the maple syrup. Taste and adjust — add a pinch of cinnamon if you like, or leave it plain, which is often best.
Serve. Spoon into bowls, pour a generous tablespoon or two of heavy cream around the edges, and drizzle with additional maple syrup. Serve immediately.

Nutrition (per serving)

Steel-Cut Oatmeal with Maple Syrup and Cream — A Vermont January in a Bowl