I’ll be honest, when I saw the video title “how a real Scotsman makes his porridge” I wasn’t expecting “three sweetener tablets and then microwave it into oblivion”.
@David Parry I worked in an Auto Parts store in Virginia with a Scottish man who went by Scotty. Ok Doug. A couple walks in and start asking for parts, when the woman asks are you from Scotland? And when she found he had learned his trade in Scotland, she asked you have auto parts stores in Scotland? He says "Shit yeah M'am, and we have electricity too!" Her husband nearly wet himself. Me too!
@@ecmcd lol definitely but if you want to try oats similar to what they ate 200 years ago buy Irish cut oats but make sure you cook it to the directions. They take a long time to cook and trust me use a pot on the stove it's going to be less frustrating.
@@allanfulton7569 Yea, pinhead and steel cut is another name they go by. They do taste better I think, but it just ain't worth taking 30 minutes just to cook a bloody bowl of porridge.
@@williamarthurfenton1496For some that’s part of what makes it so enjoyable. I love taking my time making my daily bowl of porridge. I sometimes simmer it on very low heat for a full hour after toasting the oats for ten minutes.
He might have got cause and effect back to front. If he eats cranberries everyday maybe some of the aromatics pass through his kidneys, so it's not that cranberries smell of piss, but that his piss smells of cranberries. But I'm not sure if I've eaten cranberries, so I don't know how they smell. Fresh piss of a healthy person hardly smells at all, after an hour or several it stinks.
@@109268 i get this from coffee aswell and crazy as it sounds weed!! i smoke a lot of weed and once in awhile while i urinate it smells like a stinky dubie.
The Porridge Drawer story is true, my father was at college in Glasgow in the late 40's and remembered them in the tenement lodgings, the porridge was made as thick as cement so it set solid and could be sliced and wrapped in paper. The drawers were metal lined. Very practical really - in those simpler times.
Great Grandad was a shepherd. Porridge was made and poured into the drawer. Once it had cooled enough not to evaporate the important constituent, whisky was added. When cool, divided into segments. A piece, suitably wrapped, was his lunch when out in the hills.
"Today on BigClive we're going to make authentic Scottish Haggis... You'll need a sheep, blender, the leftover oats from my last video, and a can of WD40."
Lmao. You also forgot cooking method. Place jumper cables over the metal clips at each end of the bag and use the unsafe and overpowered usb charger from my last video to gently excite the liquid inside it.
My trick is a 'chinese takeaway container' - the rectangle seems to make it boil at the ends and fold in rather than boil over. I add milk &/ Coconut cream after cooking, cools it down.
Brought the topic up with my mum (88). Her dad was a geordie but his mum and dad were glasgow shipbuilder. He was born 1903. The drawer in their case was a massive cast Iron oven bottom dish. Porridge made Monday morning with water and lots of salt before starting that weeks wash (the big set pot was only boiled on monday!) and by thursday they couldn't afford to use the stove more than once a day if lucky. Covered with Sunday's newspaper and stored on the stone shelf of the larder. Fed 2 adults, 4 kids for 7 days + rats etc. Treat was to fry it up with the goop from a pig's trotter or lard. By Saturday it was getting dry - so eaten with lard, butter or just water. Sugar treacle etc was about (esp on the docks) but not used by adults as much as it was after WW2.
@@thumbsucker29 It was just how life was. No penicillin, no NHS, average age in many industrial towns was 35-40 and wages were pretty poor. Lung pie, tripe, haggis and pig's trotters, offals were luxury foods usually the working men got the lion's share, dripping and jam sandwiches were staple foods for the rest (if they were lucky). Compared to Glasgow, Newcastle was almost pleasant. Conditions were bad everywhere "up north". The smallest graze could kill you ... but they were as bad everywhere (possibly worse in Glasgow though) Families were big because you had to have spares! (and there was no tv!) ... and the army was short on conscription candidates, 1914 almost 40% of volunteers were refused due to malnutrition. They had to feed them up to get them fit enough to be slaughtered in the trenches. First world problems eh?
@@whitehoose NO TV! The horror! My mother was given tripe while visiting a friend as a child, she didn't like it but it was during the war and you didn't waste food. She went to the toilet after finishing it and threw up, they kindly gave her a 2nd helping.
@@dorianleakey Indeed, old JLBaird hadn't achieved much by then. We have a market stall in Halifax that sells a wide variety of tripe and a flash new restaurant that serves chicken feet and fancy tripe as well as bulls bollocks on chips. I love liver, kidney and the cuts that take hours to cook ... but I don't like shellfish or anything that is inside out - and that goes for the squishy bits of the lymphatic system of cows too. My grandad used to save fish bones and marrow (which is like greasy butter!) and chew them before lighting a woodbine. Eating at their house was both an adventure and a real pleasure. In 1962 they finally swapped the radio for a telly (I still have their clockwork record layer) but apart from the racing and football results he would sit looking out the window most of the time
@@whitehoose Poor Americans typically ate a lot of "squishy bits" and "inside out" stuff too. My mother told me similar tales but never fed me any. On the other hand my German grandmother would make some of the best and some of the weirdest dishes for the same meal.
How to make next level porridge in 5 minutes. 1. Toast oats in a dry pot until it starts to smell nutty, add a pinch of salt. 2. Add boiling water just to cover. 3. Stir with a wooden spoon, cook for 3 minutes until nice and stodgy. 4. Spoon into a bowl. Add golden syrup/honey, mix well. 5. Add full fat fresh milk. 6. Eat. 7. Drink a wee dram of the good stuff, go back to bed.
The porridge in the drawer thing is very real. My grandmother, who was a farmer, used to do it with sultanas and some flaked almonds mixed in and papped it into a greaseproof paper lined old sideboard drawer. The drawer never lasted more than 2 days. It was like those granola bars you get now or energy bars weightlifters pay a fortune for. It was scoffed in no time. She only died 6 years ago aged 105 and she was an amazing woman. Her teas (5pm as she had her main meal at 12) were legendary. Everything right down to the bread and butter were home made.
3:02 Brown sugar just has molasses added to or left in it. This makes it taste better. White sugar just taste like one thing, sweet. Brown sugar has a caramel like taste.
I think you will find it's a steel rule, a ruler has extra material at the edge which would interfere with the measure, hence why it's a rule and not a ruler.
Thats all well and good, but a bigclive video without a hand-drawn schematic feels incomplete somehow. We require CliveCAD with each episode. There's gotta be technical symbology for cranberries and oats out there somewhere.
That's because you did it in America. I have the same problem. Personally, I go for cinnamon, sugar, and no milk. I go light on the water too to make it nice and thick.
The moment you think that this is just going to be an amusing little porridge video, and it turns into a full-on breakdown like everything else in this channel. Love it.
@@bobhumplick4213 In some caces, they can keep milk in the freezer to make it last. Still powered milk in this case is a good option because it lasts at room temperature.
The former Mrs. Brown once made mac & cheese using coffee whitener because we were out of milk. We ended up giving it to the dog. The dog just looked up at us with a, "Are you mad at me?", expression on her face.
I'm so glad that junk like Coffee Mate or Miracle Whip don't even exist in my country. If you offer to pour anything other than milk in someone's coffee you're either going to get a punch or a slap to your face. Also I don't get the appeal of sugar. I was definitely addicted to it as a kid (EVERYTHING sold to kids is loaded with it, I was trained to add a spoonful of sugar to already-sweetened choc milk), but as the years passed, I just started enjoying coffee black. Lemonade, no sugar. Passion fruit juice, no sugar. These fruits taste awesome and tangy on their own... Contrast is the spice of life.
I use oats and milk. Microwave for 3 minutes and cut a banana on top. I like honey and cinnamon too. I don't measure anything though, I like to live life on the edge.
@@stu0things0and0stuff I'm totally English but brought up (in the 1960s) in Glasgow and have a daughter with strong links to Inverness. I find the unconventional (but practical) aspects of this recipe an absolute delight.
Well my father had a Scottish surname and my mother also, and I have never been even near Scotland, but this sounds more like New Britain oats to me. I only eat raw oats with whole milk a half teaspoon of brown sugar and a splash of Golden syrup. Also add Bran flakes with sultanas because oats, even whole grain oats, have very little flavor. Oats is just far too messy to cook, you may as well be cooking glue in your pot.
I make mine with sultanas, cinnamon and sometimes banana. There's no need for sugar when you add fruit, in my opinion. As for the milk, I just pour it on top afterwards because I'm absolutely barbaric.
Here, here! Paddled and cycled many, many a mile with those instant things as the morning get-up-and-go. DIY (for more civilized applications) would be Bob's Red Mill with a pinch of salt, a tablespoon of butter, a tablespoon of 100% pure Maple Syrup, small clot of raisins and liquid of 1/2 water and 1/2 milk. And into the thermonuclear at level 4 power and 10 minutes. For a truly stout bowl go with Bob's "Golden Spurtle". edit: urk, I just realized I was here 11 months ago and posted nearly the same thing. Well, it's that good, dammit. And it's American. So there.
I remember seeing those sweeteners in Norway and thought they were pretty neat! I like them a lot more than the paper packets we have here in the US. I'll have to find a place to buy some.
I am a lover of facts and I thought you might appreciate these: Saccharin was first produced in 1879 and in spite of attempts by the sugar industry to smear it there is absolutely no evidence that it causes any health problems in humans right up to this day. Large doses cause bladder cancer in rats but that has been traced to a difference in their metabolism that means that saccharin causes problems in a rat's bladder that it does not cause in humans. Sugar on the other hand... In 2016 these are the official UK figures for the three substances that cause the most premature deaths: 3rd: Alcohol with 22,000 deaths per year (the BMA states that this is wrong and it is more like 80,000 but whatever, it is still third). 2nd Smoking with 120,000 deaths per year. 1st Sugar at 184,000 deaths per year. Saccharin? a long way down the table at joint last with an average of 0 deaths per year. EDITED for spelling errors.
Does drinking water cause more cancer (by making you live more) than not ever drinking water? Does eating plutonium cause more cancer than just living? Is this very dumb? (Yes)
@@mrj.o4556 If every human being on Earth ate saccharin every day there would probably still be no deaths from eating it. OK, maybe a few people would prove to be allergic to it, but that is much more likely with large molecular structures and saccharin is quite a small structure by biochemical standards. Sugar kills far more people in a week than saccharin has over the entire 140 years since its discovery.
@@crackedemerald4930 Plutonium is, I believe, poisonous as well as radioactive so it would likely kill you by radiation poisoning or more conventional poisoning before you developed cancer.
I sometimes mix some cocoa with it, and add a sliced banana after heating, it delicious. The worst porridge i've had was in the military, Alot of times it was best enjoyed by putting it in a plastic bag, and in a pocket under the jacket. Nothing like a hot bag of "porridge" to warm you up on a cold and dark winter morning in a snowy forest.
As a wee boy growing up in the former shipbuilding town of Greenock, porridge was made with water and a sprinkle of salt. When served up in the bowl I could top it with milk and a sprinkle of sugar. These days it's stirred patiently with my wooden spoon, no spurtle, at a ratio of 2 to 1 oats to milk. Raisins or sultanas plus chopped banana are the regular accoutrements, often supplemented by chopped apple and pear when in season and finished with a drizzle of heather honey. Clive is a heathen, obviously, with the sachcarine and coffeemate. I suspect he sees the sun rise before me in the morning :) , here's a wee link re the porridge drawer- www.scotsman.com/news/a-slice-of-porridge-has-always-been-top-drawer-1-1408827
From Greenock myself here. As a lad some 35 years ago, porridge in the morn and perhaps some slice. Occasional ice cream from the Orangefield cafe at the West station. Havent been back since 92.
@Sassy The Sasquatch I don't dislike them, I just can't be fuckin arsed. I'd've three eggs boiled, with some salmon and spinach eaten and washing up done by the time I could scald the face off myself with porridge.
@Sassy The Sasquatch Americans really don't eat oatmeal (what we call it here) that much. And as a Southerner, I'd almost be more likely to have grits.
"Fortunately they don't taste like piss" followed by "Let me just check they don't taste like piss" Big Clive, you almost made me squirt my coffee out my nose in laughter, bravo, this is why I LOVE watching your videos man.
6:25, "I've put all manner of stuff in the microwave." ROFLMAO! Later he pulls out bag of instant porridge from Quaker. "Let's take it to bits". Best Big Clive video EVER!!!
My mother went to Scotland as a young girl on a steamship to Edinburgh. She said the homes were cold and drafty and everyone wore bathrobes over their regular clothes to keep warm. So porridge might be OK left in a drawer. We may have to wear bathrobes this winter due to our planned "fuel crisis".
Proud lowlander here from Ayr. Holy Carp! seriously.... your say u are a Genuine Scotsman???? Never in my 41 almost 42 years have I ever seen anything as monstrous as this concoction. Please move to England immediately... for your own safety! I can forgive the use of a microwave we all have busy lives. But! sweeteners and coffee mate WTF?
I'm an Englishman of 15 more years on you (meaning more experienced porridge-eater lol) and even I found the sweetener and coffee mate idea completely yuck.
I’m English. I would not even dream of making porridge with sweeteners and coffee mate. Look at the ingredients on coffee mate, what is in that stuff? It sounds like a chemical factory leak. I just use oats, water and a pinch of salt.
My dad was recently recovering from open heart surgery, so I was making his meals for him, including oatmeal/porridge. I had never made it before, so I didn't realize it foamed up in the microwave until the timer went off and I opened the door to find it had gone everywhere... I did it on the stove top after that.
In Denmark we are more effective so we just eat raw oats with cold milk and sugar and/or raisins on top 🙂 no cool down time and takes two minutes to get in the bowl ⏩✅ Clive try it with your raw oats 🙂
sismofytter My mother is Danish. I make my oats every evening with water (I can’t have milk) and let it soften in the fridge overnight. Im 35 and it was just the other day that she found out and gave me a nod of approval and said “That’s how we made it at home when I was a girl“.
I eat porridge every day and its not because im a sweaty sock. I’m not sure i should tell you why, except to say there’s a reason they still serve it in prison after all these years. When you get to your fifties as i am, you’ll note you can no longer drink a glass of milk like you used to without certain complications. I’ve relished full cream milk since a teenager walking to school and borrowing it from people’s front porch’s. (sorry misses williams) So to be denied it after all these years missed breakfasts and being in Maggie’s army is quite a setback. I make mine with milk if you haven’t already guessed, although i have to go for the watery stuff now, it still allows me to get those wonderful nutrients, as the porridge has certain enzymes in it that like kefa break it down. A master at microwave cooking knows to use an upright container as heat rises and you can hardly get hotspots if you’ve only one spot. Adding fruit is a luxury I enjoy as well. For sugar i use both the sucralose and the stevia., us aldi’s are posher than coop’s! Stevia is still too expensive on its own, but its gaining traction. Notice the glasgow bags being used there again eh lad!?
I wanted to write a paper on all the bad things artificial sweeteners cause. I did hear all the rumors after all. I dug through the scholarly database available at the college library and found out of 500 international studies, only one found any "evidence" of negative effects from the sweeteners. Of course the one study was also the one always sited in the rumor mills. My paper ended up being on the negative stereotypes of artificial sweeteners, and my hippy professor gave me a pretty low grade.
For me it has to be "Scott's Oats". Double the water to the volume of oats. Example: 1/2 cup porridge oats - 1 cup water Pinch of salt Bring to the boil on the stove, reduce heat and simmer until it resembles bubbling lava. (this is how that simulated lava in old movies) Finish with milk. Only sweetness I ever add is maybe a chopped banana.
My microwave recipe is similar. You need a dish deep enough so it doesn't boil over. I put the steel-cut oats in with an equivalent amount of water and microwave for 2 minutes the night before. Let it cool a bit then put in the fridge. Next morning, add a measure of water again, stir it up, then m/w for 1-2 minutes at a time until done.
I've never understood people who say I only use Scotts or Quaker oats. They all come out of the same fucking field/mill and put in the packaging of the various customers.
@@johncodling9805 agreed oats are oats but there is further grading and processes involved that improve the final product. Uniformity and the removal of bad oats and crushed oats that make it overly stodgy.
@@Hotkife Rab thank you for that info, I am living here in Thailand so only Quaker here so have it every morning, my wife who is from Tbilisi Georgia has just knocked up some damson jam tastes great so tomorrow I will try it in my porridge.
People in midwest and northeast of the United States eat porridge, but we call it oatmeal. Usually it's the south that eats corn grits. They're quite good with butter.
And in the US north? Grits are with cream & butter and a sweetener of some sort (sugar & cinnamon or maple syrup or honey)... basically served like cream of wheat (grits are made from hominy corn).
My grandad (from Dalmuir) would just add a pinch of salt. We do a mug of oats to two mugs of milk (or water) in a pan. Heat until done. Sometimes add a spoon of honey. Nice and simple.
Hmmm .my Scottish family is I think the normal Scott way.Cook in a pan with salt and water ,then pour milk on after boiled . Add brown sugar to taste .Its good because it cools the porridge fast and tastes great. I can't eat it without salt.I miss my mother.
I do my porridge savory. Rolled-oats, Add garlic cracked black pepper, dry chicken stock, dried noodles, fresh parsley, fresh basil. Toss in a pot, add water and boil till thick enough to eat with a fork. Eat hot. (the noodles improve the mouth-feel).
You left out the most important question: rolled or steel cut oats? In answer to your grits question: yes, usually savory. Butter is required, cheese is a common addition, but I've seen jelly or preserves added. That assume you're eating once-cooked grits. There's also fried mush, where the grits are allowed to cool into a solid mass and sliced about 1/2" thick. The slices are then fried in butter and served with maple syrup or honey.
I can recommednd the Achray House Hotel on Lochearnhead (Scotland...). Their breakfast porridge has the option of being served with double cream and/or 18 year old malt. I sometimes have managed three breakfasts, before the fried stuff /newspaper time.
For your grits, sir, I recommend butter with sugar actually instead of just butter. Or some shredded cheese as an alternative. My dad even mixes up a fried egg after the grits are prepared. Just a suggestion. You’ll either love them or hate them
my thoughts... i could understand if he was using this recipe for porridge "on the go" where all thats available is boiling or hot water from a thermos or hot water dispenser, but for breakfast i would skip on the creamer and use actual milk.
He used Coffee Mate as a milk substitute. Hopefully he threw it away and make a pan of porridge on the hob after, with 1 cup oats, 2½ cups of milk/water.
Saccharin almost certainly gives rats bladder cancer, so don't give it to your pet rats. Luckily human metabolism is different enough from a rodents that the mechanism doesn't occur.
Guaranteed my grandpa never had porridge made this way, he was born 1910 in Paisley. He only told us his dad would eat a hot soft boiled egg for breakfast and after he'd leave for work all three kids who watched him eat it would race to eat the cold top of the egg left on the table. That's all they had till dinner.
Here in the states for oatmeal, at least growing up, we'd just make it with water brown sugar and a bit of butter. That was about it. Never ate it very frequently, but it was always something nice to eat on a rainy morning.
I have seen sliced porridge, and sliced hard cooked grits (southern USA) that you press in a pan, slice and fry it up in a skillet. I eat grits as a side like potatoes with butter/salt/pepper, but also as one would eat corn meal mush with mild and sweetener or brown sugar.
But, but... call me old fashioned, but what is wrong with real milk out of cows and real sugar from sugar cane? It's not like you have to go crazy with tons of sugar.
Honestly best oats , Warm milk on hob (full fat) once warmed , pour on oats , stir for a few mins , remove from heat, eat. I dont even bother with sugar they are quite sweet on their own imho and tastier as u can taste the actual nuttiness of the oats.
Thanks for the recipe! I like porridge better than grits! It's good with pretty much any dried fruit but I like a mix of cranberries and currants... I usually use honey after it comes out of the microwave! You should be OK with the sacharin though, it only causes cancer in California😁
Yorkshire lad here, I have 4 X that amount, semi skimmed milk, squeazy honey nutmeg, cinnamon & raisen's or dried Apricots, it fills a bowl to the top, best in MW on half power for longer 4 - 5 mins then it doesn't bubble over, then I'm set up until about 3 or 4 pm, best thing out for starting the day. You can now get Mylar press seal bags just the right size for preparing batches to keep fresh.
I hate grits so much even tho I'm from America Apparently porridge like you just made is the same as oatmeal here in the states. And I'm so glad I'm not the only one that uses creamer lol. I should start making those little packages for myself
My daily version is, one cup (no, I am not American) of Scott's Porridge Oats, fill plastic bowl with milk. Then microwave for 3 minutes and add honey, it's at perfect temperature. Done this for years.
Hey, Big Clive! Gotta few things to say here, if you ever find yourself reading this. 1) You mentioned being an older fellow in your videos, I ended up Googling your age and honestly. I thought you were at least 10 years younger! You look great for your age, man. 2) LOVE your videos! All of them! But I'd love to see more Scottish food-style videos if that's something you'd ever be interested in doing. 3) I also heard about the porridge drawer, but here in America! Perhaps immigrants bringing that over, but I know it happened here as well! And finally! 4) Not to sound lame, but you coming out of the closet helped give me the courage to do the same. So thank you for that. And thank you for all of your amazing videos!
