In April, I posted about my experience growing hulless oats. I planted oats in a small area of my suburban garden to see if I could successfully overwinter them and also to get a feel for the process of growing grain in a backyard garden. In this posting, I describe the process of harvesting, threshing and winnowing the grain. I also share some a tip about how to cook it.
So What Are Groats
When oats are first harvested, they have hulls covering the inner seed. With these hulls on, oats are called "whole oats." Once the hulls have been removed, the oats look very similar to rice grains. In this stage, they are called "groats." Groats can be eaten as is, or further processed as follows:
- Steel-Cut oats - have been processed by slicing the groats into smaller chunks. If you've ever had McCann's Irish Oatmeal, these are steel-cut oats. Quaker Oats also sells steel cut oats, but I've never seen these in my local grocery store.
- Rolled oats - This is what most people call oatmeal. The groats are first steamed and then run through metal rollers to flatten them out. Quaker Old Fashioned oatmeal is rolled oats.
- Oat Flour - Oats can also be made into flour by grinding the groats into a fine powder.
Harvesting Oats
When the oats have turned a golden color in the field, it's time to test to determine if they are ready for harvest. You do this by hulling a few seed heads and then pinching the seed. If it produces a milky white liquid, the oats are not ready to harvest. If the oat is soft and doughy, then the you're ready to cut and harvest and dry your oats.
I harvested using a hand scythe. For a small suburban plot, a hand scythe works just fine. Alternatively, you can use an electric weed trimmer. Whatever implement you use, once cut, bundle the oats together with some twine and store in a dry place for a few weeks. This process drives additional moisture from the grain.
Threshing and Winnowing
Threshing is the process of removing the grain from the seed head and the chaff (stalk). There are many ways to do this. Since I had a very small amount of grain to process, I just stripped the seed heads from the chaff by hand and then rubbed the grain together in a pillow case to remove the hull from the grain. (I placed the seed heads in the pillow case and rubbed the outside until the hulls fell from the seed.)
For larger quantities, the traditional way of removing the hulls is to use a flail to beat the hull from the grain. A flail is a three foot long piece of wood attached to a two foot long piece of wood by a metal chain or leather thong. A plastic baseball bat can also be used.
Once the grain has been threshed, you need to separate the seeds from the hulls and stalks. This process is called winnowing. The idea is to blow away the chaff and hulls from the grain. I did this using an electric fan and a plastic serving tray.
To do this, turn on the electric fan and drop some of the threshed grain in front of the blowing fan. Since the chaff and hulls are light, they will blow away and the the heavier seeds will fall down into a tray beneath the fan (see below illustration from book Home Grown Whole Grains) I winnowed further by shaking the tray in front of the fan in a process that resembles panning for gold. At the end of the process, all that's left in the tray was groats.
Storing Oats
Once removed from the hull, oats will go bad in four or five days unless you do something to stabilize them (oil in the grain goes rancid). Commercial grain sellers put the grain into a kiln, or hot oven, but the easiest storage technique for home growers is to put grain into a plastic bag and store it in the freezer.
Photo: Raw Groats
Cooking Oats
As mentioned above, you can process oats further, but we decided to just cook the groats as is. You can cook groats in a pot on the stove but we used an electric rice cooker to do the job. Just place an equal amount of groats and water into the rice cooker and turn it on. The rice cooker does all the work and in about an hour we had delicious cooked groats.
Photo: Rice cooker
My daughter had the groats with Cinnamon and sugar. My son had them with maple syrup and apples and my wife had them as a savory breakfast by topping with a little butter, salt and pepper. Oats cooked this way were a total winner; everyone loved eating them versus traditional rolled oat oatmeal. Groats have a much nuttier flavor and are far more tooth-sum - no mushy oatmeal texture.
If you have access to a health foods store, you can probably buy groats and try them before attempting to grow your own.
Best wishes to all my readers on Independence Day.
Photo: cooked groats
