Instant Oatmeal Pancakes

Becomes:

This is a recipe I came up with at work, where we had a kitchen with stoves, but a limited supply of ingredients. I wanted pancakes, and although eggs and instant oatmeal were available, no staple ingredients such as flour or bulk sugar were available.

And these days with everyone stuck at home and markets being sold out of flour, you might find this recipe useful.

Note that one of the instant oatmeal packets is cooked in the microwave in advance. In fact, whenever you prepare instant oatmeal, you should use the microwave. For my entire life, I used to just add hot water to the instant oatmeal, making a pasty glop that was edible, but not that great. When you prepare instant oatmeal in the microwave, it puffs up, and is much lighter, and not too different from non-instant oatmeal.

• 2 packets regular instant oatmeal
• 2 packets sugar (or 2 tsp sugar)
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup water
• 1 pat butter (or 1/2 Tbsp butter)
• Dash of salt

1. Add 1 packet of instant oatmeal to a bowl.
2. Measure 1/2 cup water by filling one empty oatmeal packet with water to the marked 2/3 cup line printed on the packet (yes, what the packet says is 2/3 cup is only 1/2 cup. 2/3 cup will make the batter too thin).
3. Cook for 1 minute in microwave (if the oatmeal hasn't puffed up after a minute, give it another 30 seconds).
4. The oatmeal needs to cool before adding the egg. For faster cooling, transfer the oatmeal to another bowl, spread it as thin as possible, and let it cool for about five minutes.
5. Add the other package of oatmeal, the egg, sugar and salt to the cooled oatmeal and mix thoroughly.
6. Put pan on stove on medium-high, and melt butter in pan.
7. Drip the butter into the batter while stirring, then mix thoroughly.
8. Use a spatula to spread the remaining butter over the surface of the pan.
9. Pan is ready when droplets of water skitter around a bit before evaporating.
10. Pour the batter into pan to make 4" pancakes (I usually make three in in two batches, the first with two pancakes, the second with one).
11. Peek under the pancakes to check if they’re nicely browned and ready to flip.
12. The pancakes are a bit fragile, so carefully slide the spatula under a pancake before flipping to cook the other side.
13. Eat! (they’re good plain, or with syrup, jam, Nutella or anything else you’d like)

 Options:

• Use Maple and Brown Sugar oatmeal (but don’t add any sugar if you do).
• Dice up a slice of cheese and a couple strips of bacon and some onion. With two pats (or 1 Tbsp) of butter cook the onion and bacon together until the onion starts browning. Add onion, cheese and bacon to batter. (Note: at work we had pre-cooked bacon, so it didn't give off much grease when cooked, thus the reason for the butter. If you're using raw bacon, you can probably forgo the butter).