Hold the Cinnamon—Make Green Curry Oatmeal Instead

Each Thursday, Emily Vikre (a.k.a. fiveandspice) will be sharing a new way to love breakfast—because breakfast isn't just the most important meal of the day. It's also the most awesome.

Today: Hold the cinnamon this morning and use curry in your oatmeal instead. Really.

I have a class of food I call blank-slate foods. They’re the genial hosts of the food world, the foods that are so adaptable and easy-going, you can throw almost any ingredient at them and said ingredient will be at home. Foods in this class include pasta, toast, pizza, and rice.

Oatmeal is another one, and not because it’s bland—none of my blank-slate foods are bland if they are good quality. Oatmeal has a distinctive nutty, almost dusty taste—it somehow reminds me of a grandfather in a fuzzy cardigan or a well-loved old book. But it’s a taste that is a chameleon: It can go sweet or savory or somewhere in between. You can take your oatmeal with sugar, fruit, and nuts, or add cheese and bacon, or a fried egg. So, when I was looking for a breakfast food to add green curry paste to (because I spend my time thinking about such things), oatmeal came to mind pretty quickly.

More: Oatmeal that cheats on straight cinnamon with chai tea.

When you have a bite of green curry oatmeal, your mind will do a double take. It’s unexpected, but it works. The flavor of green curry is softened and swaddled by the flavor of the oats, like a fuzzy blanket. A generous sprinkling of toasted coconut and brown sugar really pulls it all together and sparks up the flavor.

Green Curry Oatmeal

Serves 1

1 teaspoon coconut oil or olive oil
1/2 teaspoon green curry paste (homemade or store-bought), plus more to taste 
2/3 cup water (or replace half the water with coconut milk, if desired)
1/3 cup rolled oats (you could use steel cut, but you'll have to adjust the cooking time)
1 pinch salt
1 tablespoon toasted, shredded coconut
1 tablespoon brown sugar, or to taste

See the full recipe (and save and print it) here.

Photos by Emily Vikre