Is porridge a popular breakfast food in your country? What grains and methods of preparation are most often used?

31 comments

  2. Oatmeal is probably the most common. I’ve had it for breakfast every morning for the last 14 years. In the military they serve different porridges every morning (plus bread and cold cuts, joghurts, etc). Oatmeal, ryemeal, barley, rice, semolina. Cooked either with milk or with water.

    Last Christmas I had an oatmeal advent calendar. It’s fun when they make adult versions of kids’ stuff.

  3. Porridge is common. For breakfast usually but also as mellis (snack/on the go meal). Oat,rice and semolina are probably the most common.

  4. Porridge is life here. Oatmeal and rice porridge are the most common. Also lingonberry porridge.

  5. Yes, it is considered a healthy, customizable breakfast.

    Grain: Oats

    As a kid, milk and rolled oats would be mixed in a saucepan and left overnight to soak. Then brought to the boiled the next morning until thick. Served with a sprinkling of sugar or honey. (Though one of my cousins families used butter as a coating)

    Most commonly Microwaved now in a bowl with Milk, served with chopped fruit and seeds..

    This was the brands that I was raised on:

    [https://www.flahavans.ie/product/flahavans-progress-oatlets/](https://www.flahavans.ie/product/flahavans-progress-oatlets/)

  6. Oatmeal + water or milk + butter + (brown) sugar + cinnamon (mandatory)

    Probably like anywhere else.

  7. Being British living in Bulgaria I’ll explain the Bulgarian as the British is obvious.

    Breakfast cereals were unheard of here apparently before the fall of socialism, even now they’re very rare. However, there is one breakfast dish which is somewhat porridge like:

    Yufka (юфка) is dehydrated dough, stretched as thin as filo pastry, sun or in modern times oven dried to set the gluten, then crumbled into coin sized flakes.

    It is steeped in hot milk and either sweetened with honey or seasoned with sirene (a white cheese similar to feta) and/or vigeta (a dried vegetable seasoning with salt).

    Not to be confused with the homophone yufka which is a Turkish word for flatbread and shares an etymological origin.

  8. The most common porridge is probably oatmeal, [havregrynsgröt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oatmeal). It is commonly served in kindergartens and schools as breakfast, usually with cinnamon and sugar, or with applesauce.

    During Christmas, or most of December, rice pudding, [risgrynsgröt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice_pudding), is very common. Although it is called [pudding](https://www.swedishfood.com/swedish-food-recipes-desserts/389-rice-pudding) in english, it is viewed as porridge and a traditional breakfast during Christmas. It is eaten with cold milk, cinnamon and sugar.

    Lastly, Semolina, [mannagrynsgröt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semolina), is a common porridge, although not as common as the other two. It is usually eaten with cinnamon and sugar or with jam

  9. At least for my area in Germany, Hesse, I would say porridge is unusual. We don’t eat the rolled oats cooked, we eat it raw with milk and cocoa (sweet) or as muesli with fruits, nuts and sultanas.

    Since my Danish gf has been living with me, I cook it often at home, the Danes call porridge Grød and it’s very common there.

    Edit:
    The recipe I usually use contains rolled oats, milk, chia seeds, cardamom, maple syrup and bananas.

  10. Using shredded oats, not very common.

    Grießkoch is the same idea basically, just using Semolina instead of oats and milk, never water.

  11. Very common. Mix oats with twice the amount of water and a pinch of salt. Bring it to the boil, then turn the heat down and simmer it for a few minutes, stirring it all the time. Serve it with whatever you want – often milk and sugar, but I’ve seen people add fruit, honey, cream, syrup, nuts, whatever you want!

  13. I’d say very,very unusual in Italy.

    I eat it,I like it..but that was a habit I picked up in other countries.

    The places that sell the oats are not Italian supermarkets.They sell them in Lidl and in the small Indian and Bangladeshi general stores here.

    I like it a bit sweet.Milk,sugar,cinnamon,raisins and nutmeg.Sometimes I add fruit to it too.

  14. Back in the UK it was readily available in the form of oats that could be cooked with milk or water in a saucepan, then additional flavours could be added too. A small bag 500g to 1kg would cost next to nothing if you bought the supermarket own-brand and it’d feed you for a while.

    I loved putting oats, milk and a chopped banana into a saucepan, thickening it up over heat then it would leave me feeling full for the rest of the morning.

    Nowadays I’m a fan of overnight cold oats soaked in milk with peanut butter, maple syrup and chia seeds. It takes me 2 minutes to make it the night before and it is always something to look forward to in the morning.

  15. Neither porridge nor oats are popular here. Some variants of it were popular in our grandfather generation. But now with “healthy and fit” breakfast trend more people are eating it. Still not something I would call popular.

  16. I think they are not really popular. People who live healthy lifestyle do eat them (although mostly those pre-prepared mixes) but that’s it.

  17. It is not made of oats, but here the closest thing is perhaps polenta: a rustic dish, prepared with maize flour cooked in water inside a pot where it is stirred long and continuously, especially popular in the North. It is usually eaten savoury and not for breakfast (although my great-grandmother used to eat it for breakfast fried and with sugar when it was leftover). It was once the main means of sustenance for the northern lower classes, having the merit of satiating easily, even though it is a food poor in nutrients, and vitamin deficiency could cause illness. Today, it is eaten as gruel or, once solidified, grilled or fried. As mentioned, the main ingredient is maize, but there are exceptions: for example, buckwheat (in addition to maize) is also used in polenta taragna, and in the Apennine areas of Emilia-Romagna and Tuscany there is a sweet polenta made of chestnut flour. Before the discovery of America, polenta was mainly made with barley flour, this is in fact the meaning of the word *polenta* in Latin (and at the time it was probably more like porridge).

  18. From Ireland.

    Oats boiled. Add a touch of cream from the top of the milk. Then a wee drizzle of honey.

    My Scottish Ma only added a pich of salt.

  19. Bit of a stereotypical food here, typically eaten with salt as opposed to sweet flavours in my experience.

  20. Here porridge (gachas in Spanish) is synonym of bad quality food served during the (back then) mandatory military service and/or poor food made during the post-war when people did not have anything better to eat, so I’d say it’s not popular

    ​

    Also this (for a region specific variant of the dish):

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lathyrus_sativus
    ​

    >Flour made from grass peas (Spanish: almorta) is the main ingredient for the gachas manchegas or gachas de almorta.[8] Accompaniments for the dish vary throughout La Mancha. This is an ancient Manchego cuisine staple, generally consumed during the cold winter months. The dish is generally eaten directly out of the pan in which it was cooked, using either a spoon or a simple slice of bread. This dish is commonly consumed immediately after removing it from the fire, being careful not to burn one’s lips or tongue

    >The seeds contain a neurotoxin that causes lathyrism, a neurodegenerative disease, if eaten as a primary protein source for a prolonged period.

    >Due to its toxicity, its human consumption was forbidden in Spain from 1967 to 2018

  22. Very common and considered a proper breakfast meal. It is often served in kindergartens and school canteens as well as ordinary canteens.

    We eat all kinds of porridges: oatmeal, semolina, millet, rice, buckwheat. Buckwheat porridge is sort of an outlier, though, since it’s more often eaten as a side dish. Although buckwheat with milk can be a pretty good breakfast meal, too.

    There aren’t any specific recipes for porridge, you just cook the grains in milk/water and add some sugar (except for buckwheat, no sugar there), a pinch of salt, and a little bit of butter. You may also serve porridge with jam (or varenje), fruits, berries, or honey for more flavour.

    Porridge also plays an important role in the culture. For example, there’s a fairy tale about a man, who cooked porridge out of an old axe. Or Russian babushkas would feed their grandkids porridge so that they “grow strong and healthy”. Or when your head is all muddy and you can’t think straight, or spurt some nonsense, that means you’ve got “каша в голове” (porridge in your head). And when we cook porridge, we often say “кашу маслом не испортишь” (≈there’s never too much butter in porridge).

    So yeah, porridge’s kinda a big deal here.

  23. Overnight oats are quite common. I have mine by mixing half cup oats, half cup Greek yoghurt, half cup coconut milk, tablespoon chia seeds, tablespoon ground flax, tablespoon maple syrup, dash vanilla extract, slack handful of frozen fruit. Chuck in a jar in the fridge overnight. Righteous breakfast!

  24. I’d say not that common anymore, atleast in my region. Used to be a staple food tho, especially for poorer people.

    I associate it with the post-WW2 scarcity because my grandma always used to reprimand us with “be happy you don’t have to eat porridge every day” when we were picky with food.

  25. Scotland invented the porridge drawer – make a week’s supply at once to save on fuel, pour it into a drawer to set, remove it in strips. I can see this getting a revival in Brexitalypse Britain.

  26. Aside from rice and semolina puddings (those are desserts), it’s really uncommon.

    Most people have never had oatmeal… I had a roommate ten years ago who was really weirded out when she saw me eating it for breakfast. She didn’t understand why I was “cooking cereals”.

    It’s a little more common recently with Internet and since it’s considered an healthy food, but still not something lots of people will get. My supermarket now has three different rolled oats brands instead of just Quaker Oats, so at least the trend means more choice, even if it’s not huge.

  28. It’s not common at all in France. I remember watching Anglo-Saxon movies as a kid and thinking what the hell is this when people would eat porridge. I still don’t eat it as an adult because I don’t like the texture, maybe because I never had it as a child.

  29. porridge of any available grains used to be most important meal of our super poor ancestors

    which means they ditched it as soon as their life standard rose to some better level

    but……semolina porridge and german-style rice porridge were and are still popular

    oatmeal got a comeback in last cca 20 years, other -healthy- grains, too

    porridge is cooked with milk, plant -milk- and some sweetener

  30. I’ve seen this name but don’t have a damn idea of what it is. Like most of the people i know.

  31. Oats and milk microwaved is the lazy way, cooked on the hob is the normal way. With water and salt is the godless way.

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