Know your oats: A glossary via Swetha Sivakumar

Do oat terms confuse you? Here are some of the most common ones, decoded.

* Oat groats: Groats is Scottish for “oat grains with their husks removed”. Usually people don’t eat whole oat groats; they take too long to cook (60 minutes in a pressure cooker). Instead they choose steel-cut oats.

* Steel-cut oats refers to oat groats cut up using steel blades. In this form, they are easier to cook, taking under 25 minutes. And the texture is chewy, not mushy like rolled or instant oats.

* Rolled oats: These are oats that have been steamed and flattened, something like what we in India do with rice when we make poha flakes (the thicker kind). Rolled oats take 10 minutes or less to cook.

* Instant oats: These are similar to rolled oats, except they’re flattened into even thinner flakes. Thnk of this as the equivalent of thin-flake poha. These oats can be ready to eat in a minute or two; just add hot water.

* Oat fiber: This is the powdered form of the oat husk, the chaff or the inedible covering that covers all grains. It does not contain any part of the groat itself. It is full of insoluble fiber, so you cannot eat it in large amounts without encountering stomach trouble. However, it has water-absorbing properties, due to which it is often used as a baking ingredient.