This Healthy Substitute For Breadcrumbs Is Unexpectedly Tasty
Have you been wondering if there is a healthier ingredient that you can use instead of breadcrumbs to make a delicious, crispy coating for your fried chicken or fish? Well, instead of turning to classic breadcrumbs, turn instead to rolled oats. Rolled oats will not only give your dish a nutritional boost, but they'll also provide a mild and nutty-flavored coating for any food that you might typically coat with breadcrumbs.
Additionally, rolled oats pack plenty of nutritional benefits, too. They are a great source of fiber, they're low sodium, and they have absolutely no cholesterol. Not only that, but oats also contain lots of vitamins and minerals, which are excellent for your overall health. You can use rolled oats as a delicious and nutritious substitute for breadcrumbs to help bind together meatballs and to top off casseroles or other fried foods, including taking your breaded chicken to the next level. The process of turning rolled oats into a breadcrumb substitute is pretty straightforward, but there are other steps you should probably take to make your rolled oat food coating as delicious as possible.
How to substitute rolled oats for breadcrumbs
All it takes to change the texture of rolled oats into the comparable crumbly texture of breadcrumbs is to blend them in a food processor. Be sure to use a food processor that has a milling blade though. Why? This blade is excellent at milling grains so finely that the ground rolled oats will develop a similar consistency to breadcrumbs. Although you'll achieve the texture of breadcrumbs with your rolled oat substitute, you also want to make sure that you get a similarly tasty flavor, too.
Whenever you need to add flavor to a dish, what do you typically do? Season it. You should do the exact same thing for your rolled oat coating for your food since those oats tend to have a very light flavor. No one likes a boring meal after all. So season the breading mixture with garlic powder, thyme, onion powder, or dried herbs to give those oats a flavor boost. You can even get fancy and experiment with exotic spices to season your rolled oats, as well.
Add other ingredients to your rolled oat coating for more texture
Although rolled oats make for both a tasty and nutritious substitute for breadcrumbs, they may not suffice for those looking for a breadcrumb swap with maximum crunch, especially in the case of fried foods. In these instances, you can supplement your rolled oats with other healthy crunchy toppings to create a sufficiently crisp outer layer for your food.
Combine unsweetened cornflakes with your rolled oats to add more of a crunch to your food coating. You won't need a food processor to grind up your cornflakes either. Just put a bunch of cornflakes in a ziplock bag and pound the bag with your fists or a rolling pin to crumble. You can also add quinoa flakes to your rolled oat coating mixture to make dishes like quinoa-crusted fried chicken. These gluten-free flakes are extra crispy, but you'll need to pulse them in a food processor just like the rolled oats to get a crumbly texture. For an added dose of flavor, you can also toast your quinoa flakes and/or rolled oats for extra toasty seasoning in your food coating. Healthy substitutes for breadcrumbs never tasted so good.