Using oats to save money

One thing that I like to do to save money, and cut down on shopping, is to buy ingredients that I can use in lots of recipes. One of these items is oats. Having them in the pantry helps me feel food secure as they are so versatile and can be used in lots of different ways. They are a good alternative to flour if ground down. Here is a list of some of the ways I use oats to save money.

1. Make oat milk. Oat milk is useful if I have run out of milk but need some in a recipe. The trick is to only give it a quick whiz so that it doesn’t go slimey.

2. Make porridge. This is a filling breakfast, especially on a winter’s day. It can be made with milk or water, and be made sweet with sugar or honey, or savoury with salt. To enhance taste, and to give variation, it can be served with sultanas and spices added, compote, fresh fruit, cocoa, or anything that you fancy and have available.

3. Oats can be added to mince to bulk it out and stretch it to go further. My children never realised that I did that.

4. Overnight oats can be made. This is a convenient way to meal prep so that you can grab breakfast in a hurry if rushing out the door and take it to work. Overnight oats

5. Oats can be used to make biscuits or oat cookies.

6. Used in a crumble on top of fruit. I substitute half the flour for oats.

7. They make granola or muesili at a fraction of the cost and you can add whatever you have in the baking cupboard.

8. I like to make lovely pancakes with oats. They just have a bit more bite.

9. Oats can be added when making  meatballs to stretch the meat. Once cooked no one is any the wiser.

10. I often add oats when making a meat loaf.

11. Oats are useful when making protein balls or energy bites. Just add oats, peanut butter, seeds and chocolate chips and honey together, for  example.

12. They make the old favourite, flapjack.

13. Used in muffins or ginger parkin , oats give a lovely texture..

14. Make real Irish soda bread, or any kind of bread with oats flour.

15. Some times when I have no bread crumbs, I use oats in recipes such as coated chicken breasts.

16. I sometimes use them in veggie burgers.

17. They can make nice scones, especially cheese ones.

18. I add them to vegetable fritters.

19. I watched a lady make a kind of rissotto with them on YouTube once.

20. I whiz them in the food processor and use instead of flour in waffles if we are low on flour.

21. Make no bake trays eg. The healthy snicker type tray bake on this website.

22. They can be used to make exfoliators to clean the skin.

23. Put in the bath to soak in if you have itchy skin or sun burn. I put a few handfuls in muslin and tie it to the tap so that the hot water runs through it.

24. They absorb smells and so I have put a little container of oats in the fridge when storing fresh fish so that the odour doesn’t linger.

25. To make a stuffing eg. When stuffing mushrooms.

Oats are full of nutrition and that is reallly important to maintain your health when you are trying to feed yourself on a low budget. They are full of fiber, protein, and carbohydrate for energy. They  also contains vitamins B and E, good fat, and a number of minerals including magnesium and iron. They are apparently great for heart and gut health, and help with controlling blood sugar.

Oats remain a cheap staple in these times of ever increasing prices. There are studies that say that oats are contaminated with pesticides or heavy metals, the same as a lot of our food is now. I can’t afford to buy organic oats all of the time, but I do try to buy some to reduce my intake of these as much as possible. I have also reduced the amount of oats that we eat every week as we rarely eat breakfast now. Oats used to be our main breakfast each morning in winter. How do you use oats?