It’s a long way from childhood memories of a red box at the back of the pantry to competing at the World Porridge Making Championship, but that’s exactly where Caroline Velik finds herself.
On October 8, the Melbourne will line up with 26 other porridge lovers in Carrbridge, a village in the Scottish Highlands, for the (a spurtle is a paddle-shaped traditional Scottish stirrer, used for porridge, stews and such).
It’s the second year that Velik has been part of the competition. Last year, due to the pandemic, the organisers held a virtual version, with competitors sending in video entries. Velik, who cooked up a breakfast porridge featuring native Australian ingredients, came equal fourth, and this year, with the return to an in-person event back in the village hall in Carrbridge, she’s packed her bags with ingredients, a porridge pan and a spurtle to stir it with the best.
How did this love of porridge start, we asked, chatting to her as she was getting ready to compete. Do you have fond memories of bowls of porridge as a child?
“I do remember that red box of oats in the back of the pantry when I was growing up, but that was a more adult breakfast cereal, children had something else. So I don't remember eating porridge at all. And then one year, about 10 years ago, I was searching for an interesting gift for my husband, who is an architect. I came across this beautiful German-made oat roller and because Michael likes having porridge, I thought ‘oh, that might be something nice’.
“Then when we started rolling our own oats, I started eating them and realised that there was such an amazing difference in flavour and texture.
“When oats are processed, when they are rolled at the mill, they steam them to make them stable because they've got oils in them, so then they want to stabilise them so they don't go rancid. So rolled oats have been steamed and it helps them to cook a bit quicker as well. When you roll your own oats, there's no steaming. The groats themselves have been steamed a little bit to stabilise them, but it's different. Therefore, the oat takes a bit longer to cook so it is a different texture and a slightly different flavour because of that.”
At the World Porridge Making Championship, competitors cook with an even simpler form of oats, called pinhead oats. Also known as steel-cut oats or coarse oatmeal, these are groats (whole oat grains) that have been cut into smaller pieces by steel blades. Competitors have 30 minutes to cook two kinds of porridge. The prestigious Golden Spurtle, and the world championship title, is on the best traditional porridge, made with just oats, water and salt. At the same time, competitors also make their entry into the specialty porridge section, where other ingredients can be added.
Last year (when only the specialty section was held, via video, due to the pandemic), Velik’s entry (get the recipe ) featured a steamed oat porridge with quandong, mango, honey-roasted macadamias, finger lime, honey and native mint - if you don’t have a steam oven, you can use rolled oats and cook the porridge on the stove. This year, she’s making a savoury porridge featuring Asian ingredients.
Caroline Velik's 2021 world champtionship entry, porridge with native Australian flavours. Source: Steen Vestergaard
Porridge, she says is for all year long, and not just for breakfast. “The savoury porridge I’m doing, I would eat that for lunch or dinner.”
Cold porridge, she says, has also become popular for the warmer months – like the she came up with recently. She and photographer Elisa Watson – Velik calls her “my porridge collaborator” – have been having fun shooting a bunch of porridge recipes for a planned book pitch, and the overnight oats recipe is one of them.
It was porridge served in Velik’s food studio, where she does a lot of her food styling work, that led her to enter the pandemic version of the World Championships last year.
Spiced chai overnight oats. Source: Elisa Watson
“Because my studio is freezing in winter, I had always made people porridge for breakfast if we had an early start,” she explains. That prompted the idea of doing a porridge photoshoot with Watson. “I posted onto Instagram, someone tagged Golden Spurtle and that's how I found out that the competition existed.”
Velik loved the idea but had just missed the entry cut-off for the video-only pandemic version in 2020. “So I had to wait for another year to enter it, which was good because it made me think about it more, learn more about oats and porridge. And I've also realised, deep diving into this single topic, that people have really embraced porridge. If you look at some of the data over the pandemic, two of the top 10 Tik Tok and Googled recipes were overnight oats and baked oats. There's been a resurgence in interest in healthy eating and people working from home having more time to spend time making breakfast.”
So does she have some tips for people who are keen to join the porridge posse, we ask?
“I have so many tips!” she says. “For steel-cut oats, my top tip is to soak them overnight. First of all, though, toast them in a dry pan until they smell nice and toasted and nutty, then soak them overnight. Then cook them in about four times the amount of water, so you have a ratio of one to four, oats to water, with a pinch of salt.”
Does she drain the soaking water off the oats, or just add more, we ask? “Either is fine,” she says.
If you’re using rolled oats, Velik’s top tip is to use half milk and half water for a creamy result. “And it can be any kind of milk. It doesn't have to be dairy. There are so many nice milks that you can experiment with: oat milk, almond milk, coconut milk, soy milk.” And while oats have been occupying a lot of her attention for obvious reasons, Velik also likes trying other grains, such as rice or quinoa, and having fun with flavours when making porridge at home - like the Halloween porridge we spotted on her feed.
“Then [for any kind of porridge] I personally like to have a balance in textures, so I like to have something crunchy for topping.”
You could also up your porridge joy with a spurtle – Velik originally bought one made from Tasmanian Huon pine as another gift for her husband, but these days, she owns several (they are also great for stirring sourdough, she says).
For now, she’s got a different spurtle on her mind, with a big day of Golden Spurtle competition ahead, stirring up some fun in Scotland. “So much fun!” she says.
