The Saturday Kitchen – Aromatic Tomato & Orange Rice with Rolled Oats

We try to eat healthily most of the time but with high cholesterol, I am trying to weave in more whole grain foods into my diet. I’m told oats is great for bringing down the cholesterol but I really don’t like eating it in porridge, so I’ve been poking around to see how else to use it. Oat, fruit and nut bars are great and I love oat cookies, but they can be full of sugar. Then recently I came across a product called ‘Oats for rice’ which is a Quaker Oats product made for the Asian market.

It’s a simple proposition: you just add it to uncooked white rice at an oats-to-rice proportion of 1:3, drop it into the rice cooker, and cook as you would ordinary rice. The idea is to increase one’s wholegrain intake. I tried it and loved it for its springy, pleasantly chewy texture and fragrant, nutty flavour. From what I see, I think you can use ordinary rolled oats for this.

While you can cook it plain with rice and eat it like in any ordinary Asian meal, I also played around with it and here’s a simple recipe I came up with. It’s super easy to make with minimal cooking skills and time required. It’s also a great way to use up leftover rice.