Overnight oats with peanut butter

Overnight oats are a great way to start the day, so today I wanted to share with you my favourite way of making overnight oats. I like how filling oats are and together with peanut butter makes me pretty much unstoppable!

Did you know that peanut butter has the same amount of protein as a salmon? How cool is that? Ever since I realised that I need to eat more protein to make me less hungry (I know you are shaking your head, thinking how doesn’t she know this?) and stop me from eating cakes all day, I started to add peanut butter to just about everything. Well, it’s so much cheaper than salmon!

Overnight Oats with Peanut Butter – the basic recipe

There are so many different variations, but if you want to make a very basic recipe you will need:

• Oats
• Peanut Butter
• Milk

Oats

I usually use basic rolled oats and sometimes I even buy gluten-free oats. What you don’t want to use is those kind of instant hot oat sachets, because the oats are already mixed with other ingredients and they are far too small.

I don’t tend to buy anything fancy, just ordinary oats from non-branded supermarket choice. If you want to keep things healthy, choose simple oats with no additional sugar, salt or any other ingredients.

Peanut Butter

It’s your choice whether you want to use crunchy or smooth, for some reason I prefer smooth peanut butter. What you do want to make sure though, is to choose a peanut butter with the highest peanut’s content and no sugar. Over the years, I’ve tried both the cheaper versions and the more expensive ones and they are so very different! Really it comes down to personal preference.

Milk

You can use any kind of milk you have or like. I’ve also made overnight oats with half yoghurt and half water mix (which was delicious, by the way) or even just water (which was a bit basic, to say the least!!).

• Full fat, semi-skimmed or skimmed dairy milk
• Soya Milk
• Oats Milk
• Rice Milk
• Dairy Milk (without lactose)
• Yoghurt

Optional ingredients, which work well with the oats and peanut butter include:

• Chia Seeds
• Banana
• Chocolate (milk or dark)
• Pineapple
• Blueberries
• Dried Fruit
• Nuts

Sweeteners

• Sugar (granulated or molasses sugar)
• Honey
• Maple syrup
• Date Syrup
• Coconut syrup

Spice or flavourings

• Cinnamon
• Mixed Spice
• Pumpkin Pie Spice
• Vanilla Extract

Here is how to make your overnight oats

1. Measure and mix the oats, sugar, salt and spices in a small bowl or jam jar
2. Add the milk and peanut butter & mix
3. Close the lid & put in the fridge overnight

Looks easy, doesn’t it?

The only tricky bit is to make sure that you have enough liquid to let the oats soak up and expand. I find that it slightly depends on the type of milk and oats you are using, but usually, 1/2 cup of oats is fine in a 3/4 cup of milk. Sometimes I keep the ration of 1/2 oats to 1 cup of milk and then it’s slightly watery, but I don’t really mind. I prefer if the oats are fully soaked then not.

A few questions you might have about overnight oats

Is soaking oats necessary ?

No, it’s not necessary. I mean you can eat oats without soaking, but to be honest you are going to add your digestive system extra work. The soaking makes the oats easier to digest and easier for our digestive system to extract all the nutrition from the oats.

Can I do overnight oats without refrigeration?

Yes, absolutely! We’ve been making overnight oats when we were camping and didn’t have any access to fridge. The oats are fine outside the fridge, but it depends what kind of milk you are going to use. If you use plan based milk (like oats, soya or rice milk) your oats will be fine overnight without the fridge. Saying that, we used just normal milk back then and it was fine too and the milk didn’t go sour.

More breakfast oats recipes

• Pumpkin Pie Spice Oatmeal >>
• Apple Pie Oatmeal >>
• Chocolate Brownie & Bananas Oatmeal >>