The oat, sometimes called the common oat, is a species of cereal grain grown for its seed, which is known by the same name. While oats are suitable for human consumption as oatmeal and rolled oats, one of the most common uses is as livestock feed. Oats are a nutrient-rich food associated with lower blood cholesterol when consumed regularly.
Porridge is a food made by heating or boiling ground, crushed or chopped starchy plants, typically grain, in milk or water. It is often cooked or served with added flavourings such as sugar, honey, fruit, or syrup to make a sweet cereal, or it can be mixed with spices, meat, or vegetables to make a savoury dish. It is usually served hot in a bowl, depending on its consistency. Oat porridge, or oatmeal, is one of the most common types of porridge. Gruel is a thinner version of porridge and congee is a savoury variation of porridge of Asian origin.
Breakfast cereal is a breakfast food made from processed cereal grains. It is traditionally eaten as part of breakfast, or a snack food, primarily in Western societies.
Oatmeal is a preparation of oats that have been de-husked, steamed, and flattened, or a coarse flour of hulled oat grains (groats) that have either been milled (ground), rolled, or steel-cut. Ground oats are also called white oats. Steel-cut oats are known as coarse oatmeal, Irish oatmeal, or pinhead oats. Rolled oats were traditionally thick old-fashioned oats, but can be made thinner or smaller, and may be categorized as quick oatmeal or instant oatmeal depending on the cooking time required, which is determined by the size of the oats and the amount of precooking.
A blood sausage is a sausage filled with blood that is cooked or dried and mixed with a filler until it is thick enough to solidify when cooled. Most commonly, the blood of pigs, sheep, lamb, cow, chicken, or goose is used.
Semolina is the name given to coarsely milled durum wheat mainly used in making couscous, pasta, and sweet puddings. The term semolina is also used to designate coarse millings of other varieties of wheat, and sometimes other grains as well.
Peasant foods are dishes eaten by peasants, made from accessible and inexpensive ingredients.
In English, kasha usually refers to the pseudocereal buckwheat or its culinary preparations. In Eastern European cuisine, kasha can apply to any kind of cooked grain. It can be baked but most often is boiled, either in water or milk, and therefore the term coincides with the English definition of 'porridge', but the word can also refer to the grain before preparation, which corresponds to the definition of 'groats'. This understanding of kasha concerns mainly Belarus (каша), the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and the Republic of Moldova, Russia (каша), Slovakia, Slovenia, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine (каша), where the term, besides buckwheat, can apply to wheat, barley, oats, millet and rye. Kashas have been an important element of Slavic diet for at least 1,000 years.
Goetta is a meat-and-grain sausage or mush of German inspiration that is popular in Metro Cincinnati. It is primarily composed of ground meat, steel-cut oats and spices. It was originally a dish meant to stretch out servings of meat over several meals to conserve money, and is a similar dish to scrapple and livermush, both also developed by German immigrants.
A whole grain is a grain of any cereal and pseudocereal that contains the endosperm, germ, and bran, in contrast to refined grains, which retain only the endosperm.
Rolled oats are a type of lightly processed whole-grain food. They are made from oat groats that have been dehusked and steamed, before being rolled into flat flakes under heavy rollers and then stabilized by being lightly toasted.
Steel-cut oats (US), also called pinhead oats, coarse oatmeal (UK), or Irish oatmeal, are groats of whole oats which have been chopped into two or three pinhead-sized pieces. The pieces can then be sold, or processed further to make rolled oat flakes, of smaller size than flakes of whole groats. Steel-cutting produces oatmeal with a chewier and coarser texture than other processes.
Kūčiukai also called Christmas cakes - is a traditional Lithuanian dish served on Kūčios, the traditional Christmas Eve dinner in Lithuania. They are small, slightly sweet pastries made from leavened dough and poppy seeds. There are variations in sweetness, it is usually eaten dry but can be served soaked in poppy milk or with cranberry kissel. Initially they were made as small loaves of bread served for the spirits - vėlės.
Stippgrütze, also called Wurstebrei, is a German dish from Westphalia which is similar to Grützwurst or Knipp. It consists of barley groats cooked in sausage juices (Wurstbrühe), which are enriched with pieces of meat, offal, such as heart, kidney or liver and seasoned with spices and salt. More rarely, finely chopped onions are added. The cooked ingredients are minced after the juices have been poured off and a crumbly cake is left which is held together with fat and which sets on cooling. There are various recipes, but they all contain barley groats, fat and meat.
Bulgur, or burghul, is a cracked wheat foodstuff found in West Asian cuisine.
Ancient grains is a marketing term used to describe a category of grains and pseudocereals that are purported to have been minimally changed by selective breeding over recent millennia, as opposed to more widespread cereals such as corn, rice and modern varieties of wheat, which are the product of thousands of years of selective breeding. Ancient grains are often marketed as being more nutritious than modern grains, though their health benefits over modern varieties have been disputed by some nutritionists.
