granola, and I don’t mean me

Crock Pot Granola, you say?  What’s that, you say?  Well, I’ll tell you.  The Crock Pot (aka slow cooker, aka grandma pot) is a great way to cook granola so your house smells wonderful, not like burned granola.  I love granola but it is darned expensive.  And the Crock Pot can only make so much stew, chili and Monday Night Special before it needs a break.

I don’t know where I got the idea, but I found a recipe I tweaked (a lot) and headed to the kitchen.

This is my kind of cooking.  A basic list of ingredients, modify to match what you like or at least what you have on hand and skip the measuring cups.  Here’s my list of ingredients:

• 5 cups oatmeal (the large rolled oats variety)
• 1/2+ cup honey*
• 1/2 cup oil or melted butter
• 1tsp vanilla
• 1tsp cinnamon
• 1/2+ cup dried fruit

Nuts if you like them. I don’t so I didn’t.

*I added more honey because I like it to be clumpy. (1 cup was still not enough to clump this amount of oats) I also greatly increased the amount of vanilla, cinnamon and dried fruit to be more what I wanted.

Basically, whatever ingredients you want on low for 3-4 hours stirring every 30 minutes.  Oh, and vent the lid with a chopstick.  The chopstick is the key.

♦ ♦ ♦

Now that that’s done how about some microwave granola?  Nope, not out of my tree.  Not yet anyway.  I found this recipe and thought I would give it a go because it is supposed to be clumpy.

And truly, it takes one more dish than the above recipe and 10 minutes actually spent in the kitchen.  But then you’re done.  And eating granola before the crock pot has gotten its first stir.  These ingredients are:

• 3 cups oatmeal (Either Quick Oats or Old Fashioned, they both work well)
• 1/3 cup coconut (may be omitted, I did)
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 3 tablespoons honey
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/2 cup raisins (may be omitted, or increased and substituted with dried cranberries as I did)

The directions here are a little funky.

Pour oatmeal (read it again, just the oatmeal) into a glass microwaveable dish and cook for two minutes; stirring once.  Combine all other ingredients into a bowl.  Add the oatmeal and stir to coat.  Place in glass dish and microwave for 4 minutes stirring every minute.  Cool on wax paper.

So why am I giving you two completely different recipes on how to make the same thing?  Because neither one is exactly what I want.  The first one is great in flavor but has the consistency of cereal when done.  The second one is clumpy and bite size but really sweet with heavy brown sugar flavor.

I thought this would be an easy cooking project.  You thought this would be a nice cooking post.  Apparently we were both wrong.  Do you have a granola recipe you love?  Can I have it please?  I’m unsatisfied and I don’t like it.