Strawberry Steel Cut Oats with Goji Berries, Dates and Turmeric

Warm your morning with a sweet flavorful feast of antioxidant rich goodness. This healthy plant-based hot breakfast bowl contains no refined sweeteners and is packed with multiple nutrients and fiber. A perfect recipe for make-ahead meal prep.

RECIPE ORIGIN STORY

I’m always in the mood for fruity flavorful hot cereal bowls first thing in the morning and like to stock a variety of shelf stable dried fruits, nuts and seeds so I can make things interesting, even when I’m all out of fresh produce. On a particularly chilly fall morning when I’d been feeling under the weather for several days, I decided to use frozen strawberries along with dried goji berries to create a soothing hot cereal bowl to perk up my appetite and help heal my body. Since learning about their numerous health benefits, dried goji berries have become one of my pantry staples. Once in a while I add them to hot cereals or overnight oats. And it just so happens that my freezer’s almost always stocked with frozen strawberries to use in smoothies and nice cream. I included turmeric because of its multiple health promoting benefits, black pepper to boost the healthful impact of the turmeric, flaxseeds for the Omega-3s, dates for whole food sweetness and cardamom because I love how it tastes with everything fruity. The result was so lovely that I quickly jotted down the ingredients I’d used, knowing that this could turn into a great recipe for my food blog. I love that I can easily whip up this nourishing hot cereal from ingredients I almost always have in my freezer and pantry.

COOKED STRAWBERRIES CAN BE GOOD

Long before I became vegan and whole food plant-based (WFPB), I’d been a foodie and pretty good cook. Baking and desserts had always been my specialty. Somewhere along the way I’d read a Gourmet Magazine article that stated in no uncertain terms that fresh strawberries are always better than cooked. So if you wanted to make some sort of strawberry pastry, go for a fresh strawberry tart and forget about massacring those ripe juicy beauties by baking them into a pie. That advice got stuck in my head and I avoided cooking strawberries for decades. But now I think I’m over the black and white thinking about cooked strawberries. Sure, there’s a lot to be said for the taste of high quality fresh strawberries atop a creamy pie, but the generalization about never cooking them at all was heavy handed. Strawberry jam, after all, is a culinary classic enjoyed all over the world.

Now that I’m WFPB many of my long standing rules have changed. My goal is to eat as many different whole plant foods as possible throughout any given week. For nutritional reasons, I try to eat berries every single day. And though cooking does decrease the overall nutritional content of berries, the bioavailability of some antioxidants can increase after cooking.

Over the years I’ve come to rely on frozen fruits, not only because they’re great in smoothies, but because frozen fruits can be an economical way to stay well stocked. And although thawed frozen strawberries are never going to appeal to me as a stand alone snack the way that fresh strawberries do, cooking them into hot cereal turned out to be a great idea. For this recipe fresh or frozen berries will work equally well. Just remember that if you need to chop frozen strawberries they’ll have to thaw a bit first.

WHAT ARE GOJI BERRIES ?

Goji berries are a small oval-shaped fruit native to China. Although they can be eaten raw, they are almost always purchased in dry form. These dense, fibrous, nutrient-rich little miracles have a sweet, mild, tutti fruity type flavor that’s hard to pin down but which compliments many other ingredients. They’re packed with antioxidants that support overall health and protect against disease. Like all berries, goji berries are a great source of vitamin C. But what makes goji berries stand out from many other berries is that they’re packed with vitamins A, K, and E while also being a good source of iron. I buy them in bulk, keep them in a jar, and usually use them in cereal or for making gorp.

JUST DATING

Dates are a healthy ingredient in their own right, but in this recipe they’re primarily used as a substitute for a refined sweetener like brown sugar or maple syrup—the things I used to believe were essential to the enjoyment of hot cereal. They are thinly sliced because the idea is to let them dissolve and spread their caramel-like sweetness into the rest of the ingredients. Slicing dates makes them easier to measure while providing a chance to check for and remove any pits or hard bits.

My favorite dates for cooking are pitted Deglet Noor because they’re sweet, flavorful, widely available and usually soft and moist. You can also use medjool, or any other kind of date.

TURMERIC & BLACK PEPPER

I try to have turmeric every day because of its anti-cancer, anti-inflammatory, anti-viral, antimicrobial and antioxidant properties. It’s a lovely, mild tasting, colorful way to turn what I eat into effective plant medicine. Recently, I’ve learned that by combining black pepper with turmeric you are increasing the bioavailability of curcumin, the most important component of turmeric. Adding black pepper is not a problem for me because I like spicy food in general, and don’t experience black pepper as being particularly spicy anyway. But if you don’t like the idea of black pepper in your oatmeal (totally understandable!) then by all means leave it out or use less.

FLAXSEEDS

In this recipe I’m using flaxseeds as a way to increase the nutrient content and because I like the texture and color variation. I’m not using them as a binder and they’re not essential to the recipe. You can use chia seeds, hemp hearts, sunflower seeds or any kind of chopped nut instead, or just leave them out altogether.

GROUND CARDAMOM

Cardamom is one of my all time favorite flavors. I love its gentle floral quality and use it every chance I get. However, it is not an essential ingredient in this recipe and you can absolutely leave it out, or replace it with another spice or flavoring. Ground ginger and/or pinch of nutmeg might be nice in this recipe or maybe a teaspoon or two of vanilla extract. Be creative and make it your own.

related recipes you’ll love