What else to do with oatmeal?

We had a new oatmeal for breakfast the other day, and it was so good that I got to wondering - what kind of savory main courses or side dishes could you make with oatmeal? (Besides Haggis, thank you.) Cookies and crumble sure, but I was wondering if there is any oatmeal equivalent of polenta courses, or risotto, or ...?

What was it Samuel Johnson said? "..a grain which in England is generally given to horses, but which in Scotland supports the people."

You can roll trout in oatmeal seasoned with salt and pepper, and fry it till brown.

There's Oatmeal Soup:
Melt 1 tablespoon butter in a pan, fry 1 large onion (chopped finely) till soft but not brown. Add 2 level tablespoons medium oatmeal, and cook a few minutes. Add 2 cups chicken stock, stirring, and simmer with the lid on the pan 1/2 hour. Then force it through a sieve or blend. Return to pan, reheat with 1 cup milk, season with salt & pepper. Serve garnished with cream and chopped parsley.

Or there's Skirlie, which you can eat as a side dish with meat, fish or game birds.
2 cups oatmeal, 2 onions, finely chopped, 4 oz grate suet (or 4 tablespoons dripping), salt & pepper.
Fry the onions in the fat till golden brown, then stir in the oatmeal. Keep stirring over gentle heat for 5 minutes or so. The salt & pepper goes in sometime during this process. Sometimes this mixture is then packed into a greased pudding basin and steamed for an hour. When done like this it is called Mealie Pudding. Or you can make dumplings by rolling this mixture into balls and poaching them in boiling soup.

These two recipes are paraphrased from Theodora Fitzgibbon's "A Taste of Scotland". Yes, I've tried them. They have curiosity value.

There are also oatcakes, which can be made with bacon dripping for an extra-savoury flavour - interesting addition to the cheeseboard.

They have curiosity value.

Now there's a ringing endorsement. I wonder if the lack of oat cuisine (sorry!) is due to the oat's misfortune in only having Scottish cooking to make the case for them. The oatmeal soup actually sounds intriguing with a few additions - sage? ham or mushroom stock? reduce to polenta thickness and grate cheese on it? I suppose I could try fried chicken rolled in oats too.

the oat's misfortune in only having Scottish cooking to make the case for them

Quite a lot of Scottish cooking is good: certainly tastier and more interesting than these. But we can see by looking at the ingredients that skirlie and oatmeal soup and mealie pudding are poor folks' food, basically just oatmeal with some onion, salt and pepper to perk up the flavour a bit.

Oatmeal can be thrown into a lot of things as a thickener. Eg, throw a handfull of oatmeal in the mince to thicken it up when you're making mince and tatties.

I guess you could try treating oatmeal in the manner of polenta with some success. Slices of porridge made me think of the old highland practice of "the porridge drawer". A big batch of thick porridge would be poured into a scrubbed drawer in the kitchen dresser, where it would cool and set, and in the day(s) following, slices could be cut out of the slab for eating - either alone or with some treacle or similar spread on. Porridge slices could be taken out to the fields wrapped up in cloth for lunch. The practice was handy on the Sabbath; a lot of highlanders and islanders were (in some places, still are) strict observers of the Sabbath and would not cook or do kitchen cleaning on that day. (Not kidding. Look it up. I hardly liked to believe the first Scot who told me about the porridge drawer but it's true.)

I have savory a few times. Add roasted/grilled vegetables or olive tapenade, try it with sauteed mushrooms, caramelized onions and Parmesan cheese. Sometimes I add truffle butter or cream.

Oatmeal makes a good filler/binder in meatloaf.

With apologies, but with the exception of oatmeal cookies, oatmeal should indeed be reserved for horses.

Best
Rogov

Oatmeal makes a good filler/binder in meatloaf.

Hmmm, or maybe as part of the stuffing in a stuffed head of cabbage?

Jacques - "sometimes I add truffle butter or cream" - that's cheating!

There are also oatcakes, which can be made with bacon dripping for an extra-savoury flavour - interesting addition to the cheeseboard.

This is the true use for oats.

You can use them in more cookies than traditional oatmeal cookies. A half cup or more does wonders for almost any cookie. Same is true for flaked coconut. If you look at cookie and cake recipes in any Southern Living cookbook, the best for cakes and cookies IOHO, you will find one or both of these in most recipes.