Breakfast Cereals Recipe ingredients

To prepare this Breakfast Cereals Recipe, first cereals are in a dry form and much water needs to be added during cooking; they also contain considerable tough cellulose. A high degree of heat is needed, to soften the cellulose, or they may be cooked at a lower temperature, if the time of cooking be lengthened. Some "breakfast foods," as those to which the term "rolled" is applied, are partly "steam-cooked" and half an hour's cooking will generally suffice for these. Wheat germ meal and other similar preparations need an hour's cooking; oatmeal and corn meal call for six to eight hours and if cooked in a double boiler longer cooking is advisable. Rice boiled in water, as potatoes, will cook in about the same time as potatoes, from twenty to thirty minutes. It will take about forty-five minutes to cook rice in a double boiler. Salt -- a teaspoonful to a pint -- should be added to the water in which cereals are to be cooked. Proportion of water needed: Cereals containing a goodly proportion of gluten call for less water than those in which gluten is replaced by starch. In general four times the weight of the cereal in water is needed. Thus, one cup of cereal, weighing half a pound, would call for two pounds, or a quart, of water. When cooking Vitos and other cereals, rich in gluten, cut down the water to three or three and one-half cups.

METHOD OF COOKING CEREALS

Turn the requisite quantity of boiling water -- as a pint -- into the upper part of a double boiler, add a teaspoonful of salt (to the pint) and wait until the water reboils; then stir vigorously while slowly turning half a cup of cereal into the water. Do not add the cereal fast enough to stop the boiling of the water. Stir and let boil five minutes, then set it into the lower part of the double boiler in which boiling water has been poured to one-third the height, cover the cereal and let cook over the boiling water the requisite time. Add boiling water to the outer kettle, as needed to surround the inner kettle, without its boiling over. Do not stir the cereal after the first five minutes. When cooked the cereal should be rather stiff. If it be soft and mushy, it is not readily masticated.