Breakfast for Kids: Oatmeal
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This is part of our breakfast series: simple and healthy breakfast ideas that can be made quickly for busy parents. Skip the cereal everyday, and help build a healthy foundation for yourself and your kids.
My kids always want cereal for breakfast. If I let them choose everyday, that's what they would choose to eat. Of course, that’s not really surprising considering how sweet cereal is. I actually will grab a handful of cereal for a sweet snack for myself if I’m really craving something sugary (we don’t keep a lot of sweets in our home).
What is surprising is how much my kids love oatmeal. I’m not talking about the little packets of oatmeal that are also loaded with sugar either (in fact, we have a box of those packets that’s just sitting in our pantry because nobody likes those). I’m talking about plain oatmeal with no sugar added. On our most recent trip, the hotel we stayed at had oatmeal as an option for breakfast, and my kids ate it right up.
When I was growing up, we would eat many varieties of hot cereal - namely different types of cream of wheat, which is more like a pureed oatmeal in terms of its texture. We would load it up with butter and sugar though as plain oatmeal was just too much for us to imagine. Negates part of the reason for eating oatmeal over cereal in the first place.
Making oatmeal
There are many ways to make oatmeal: stovetop, microwave, or adding hot water. For a busy parent, the stovetop is probably the hardest way to go. We used to go this route, and you can actually make a really tasty version of oatmeal this way by using milk instead of water, but it’s definitely more work.
These days, we almost always make our oatmeal using boiling/hot water added to dry oatmeal. We have a Keurig machine that we use for this purpose. Turn the Keurig on, remove any pods that are in the machine (this is a key step unless you want coffee flavored oatmeal), and then select how much water you want added. For us, ¾ cup of dry oatmeal to the regular coffee mug size water works well. Once the water is added, mix and then cover your bowl with a plate and let it sit for 3-5 minutes.
If you don’t own a Keurig, or would prefer the microwave, it’s also easy to do that way. ¾ cup of oatmeal to ¾ cup of water. Cover and place that in the microwave for 1.5 minutes. Pull it out, stir it, and then back in for another 1.5 minutes. Let it sit for 3-5 minutes.
Once your oatmeal is ready, you then add in any additional additives that you’d like.
Additives
I am exaggerating that my kids love plain oatmeal. While they will eat it if I force them to, they do like to add different things into their oatmeal. We try to make sure that the things that are added are healthy though; no straight sugar and butter being added.
In all cases below, you will first make your oatmeal, and then you’ll add in the additive after the oatmeal is ready. Stir in your additive, and cover your other oatmeal for another 2 minutes.
Applesauce
Our number one additive to oatmeal is applesauce. Plain applesauce, with no other added sugar. We usually buy the single serve cups of applesauce, and that’s what we’ll use. For about ¾ cup of dry oatmeal, we add one of the self serve cups of applesauce (so ½ cup of applesauce).
If you need some added sugar, you could use the cinnamon flavored applesauce, or one of the other varieties as well - they have so many versions of applesauce these days that you can really get lots of different flavors in your oatmeal.
Fresh Fruit
Strawberries, peaches, bananas, blueberries, or other fruits all make a very tasty additive for oatmeal. We have a peach tree, so we often include peaches in our oatmeal during the fall, but store bought fruit can still taste great as well. Slice any fruits that you need an either place on top or mix them in to your oatmeal.
Yogurt
This was quite popular in our household for awhile. There are so many different varieties of yogurt, that you can really add most any flavor you want to your oatmeal with it. It’s important to watch what yogurt you’re buying in general as a lot of it can be loaded with sugar and be less healthy - I love peanut butter cup yogurt (not in oatmeal), but those things are loaded with so much sugar that it’s no real surprise why I love it.
Yogurt will change the texture a bit of your oatmeal, so just keep that in mind when going this route. Similar to applesauce, we use about ¾ cup of dry oatmeal to ½ cup of yogurt.
Baby food
The credit on this one goes completely to my wife. My mind was completely blown the first time she pulled out one of those little packs of pureed fruits and added it to her oatmeal. It’s a great way to flavor your oatmeal without adding a bunch of extra sugar - baby food doesn’t have any additional sugar added, and since you’re already buying it (or have been), just grab a few extras for your breakfast needs.
There’s not really a measurement here - add as much or as little as you need to make your oatmeal taste how you’d like it. Our kids love mango and peach added, but basically any of the fruits are great additions to oatmeal.
Conclusion
I spend about 3 minutes making oatmeal in the morning for my kids. There’s not really much to it once you’ve done it a few times. Enjoy a healthy and tasty breakfast to start your day off right with little effort.
