Talk:Porridge

Does anybody really eat a dish called Groats that's made from unprocessed oats? I'm familiar with Oat Groats which I've used to make porridge (since substituted steel-cut oats...) which are hulled oats. Occasionally an unhulled oat slips through the manufacturing process and the hull is nothing a human would want to eat. I'd be surprised if anybody not starving and devoid of all technology would eat a bowl full of it.

The oats are cooked in milk, water or a mixture of the two. Scottish traditionalists allow only oats, water and salt. Traditionally, it is left overnight on a banked-up (barely alight) cooking range or in smouldering fire ashes, possibly due to religious (sabbatarian) restrictions spreading to daily usage. There are techniques suggested by cooks, such as pre-soaking, but a comparative test documented in an article in The Guardian found very little difference in the end result.

'Tests' such as this, whether for sensationalist news media or scientists, in no way 'prove' anything. You cannot prove there is little difference in outcome; you can only prove there is little difference in outcome to those particular singular test subjects.

In the U.S., this term is pretty much only used in fairy-tales, and it is kind of a staple there. (Instead of "porridge," we use oatmeal (for oats), kasha (for buckwheat), and "(hot) cereal" to also include things like Cream of Wheat and Cream of Rice. Other hot cereals are less common. Grits are normally eaten on a plate rather than out of a bowl and not considered a cereal. It would be helpful if we had a source for the American near-exclusive use of the word to fairy-tales so we could add this information. Kdammers (talk) 18:06, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

It's certainly odd that the Porridge article is written from a predominantly American perspective even though Americans don't generally use the term. British tourists visiting the US are often puzzled that hotels don't know what porridge is, and expect residents to order 'oatmeal' or 'oats' if they want it. --Ef80 (talk) 16:21, 21 June 2022 (UTC)