This Is The Best And Only Way You Should Ever Be Making Chia Oatmeal

Unsplash/Jennifer Pallian

Overnight oats fans know the genuine struggle of finding the ideal texture in their breakfast. And that’s because it’s not a meal that naturally lends itself to balance with its two key ingredients: oats and chia seeds.

According to Cobi Levy, the chef and a partner at Broken Coconut, a new healthy fast-casual restaurant in New York City, trying to make overnight oats work is like cooking several parts of a meal that each require different cook times and temperatures all in the same oven. It’s just a recipe for disappointment.

So the key is to stop throwing everything in a single Mason jar out of convenience and focus on what you want the end result to look like — a warm, creamy blend of oats and chia that is reminiscent of childhood and provides a major nutritional punch to your morning at the same time. And to do that, you need to keep the ingredients separate until the very end of the recipe.

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Chia seeds only need to soak for about three hours to achieve their coveted gelatinous consistently, so prep those separately. The oats are the easiest to cook — simply follow the directions on the packaging of your preferred oats brand. At Broken Coconut, Levy uses Bob’s Red Mill gluten-free oats and cooks them in coconut milk so all the dairy-free folks can enjoy them as well.

Once both the oats and chia seeds are prepped, combine them in a 3:1, oats-to-chia, ratio. From there, you can add in all of your favorite spices and toppings — cinnamon, vanilla extract, nuts, berries and bananas. The sky’s the limit.

After one bite of this chia oatmeal, your old overnight oats attempts will become distant memories of the past. Trust us — it’s totally worth the real-time cooking rather than meal prepping here.