Overnight Steel-Cut Oats

I consider myself a pretty healthy eater.  I use my fryer about once a year, and I almost always decrease the amount of butter or oil in a dish before I make it.  I sub milk or half and half for cream.  (Most of the time.)  I don't gorge myself on chocolate, cakes, and other treats.  Except during Teacher Appreciation Week, when delicious goodies are at every turn and calories don't count.
  
As I was saying, I'm a pretty healthy eater.  I have limits though.  I don't eat celery, I start most days with a bowl of knock-off Lucky Charms, and I have never bought a jug of skim milk in my life.  (I figure, if I ever get a hankering for it, I'll find a way to dye water white.) 

So that brings me to oatmeal.  Ah, oatmeal.  Whenever I'm reading Charlotte's Web to my students, I always imagine that the slop in the pigs' trough is probably leftover oatmeal that the children refused to eat.  I'll choke down one of those packets of Super Sugar Maple Brown Sugar Here's Some More Sugar For Good Measure oatmeal, but the real stuff?  No way.  And I've seen steel cut oats in the health food aisle before, but I thought that they probably tasted even worse than regular oatmeal.

Oh, but I was wrong.

Steel cut oats have a delicious chew instead of that glop-in-the-mouth feel that standard oatmeal has.  They have more flavor and go great with a smattering of banana slices and pecans on top.  I've seen the light! 

Seen on Cooking With Chrissy
Originally from Good Life Eats, adapted by The Novice Chef

INGREDIENTS

1 cup steel cut oats
1 3/4 cups milk
2 tablespoons brown sugar
4 ounces applesauce
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
pinch of salt

DIRECTIONS

In a nonmetal bowl, combine oats, brown sugar, applesauce, cinnamon and salt and stir to combine. Stir in milk; cover and chill for 8 to 24 hours.

To serve, transfer oatmeal mixture to a medium saucepan. Heat the oats just until it begins to boil, then reduce the heat to low. Simmer, uncovered, for 5 minutes or until oatmeal is done, adding additional milk if desired and stirring occasionally.

Remove from heat. Add your favorite mix-ins, and serve with additional milk, if desired.