Healthful Homemade Granola
You can really let your imagination run wild when it comes to homemade granola. Making your own granola is easy, fast, and a lot cheaper than purchasing it.
Granola is a great way to start the morning off. Oats are great for your digestion and nervous system. They are a valuable prebiotic food that increase our beneficial intestinal bifidobacteria and lactic acid bacteria. These guys produce a substance called butyrate which has been previously shown to reduce inflammation and protect against obesity.
I like to make granola in big batches, so the recipe below is for a large batch. Remember, all the ingredients (except the oats and wet ingredients) are optional and you can vary the amounts. I usually just grab whatever I have hanging around in my pantry. You will quickly learn that you can substitute and create many different flavoured granolas – cinnamon and raisin, ‘tropical mix’, apple, even chocolate chip!
This recipe will get you those yummy granola clumps. However, you can skip the ‘wet’ portion of the recipe (no need to bake in this case) to make muesli.
Ingredients:
Dry
- 3 cups rolled oats (you can play with the portion)
- 3 cups of oat flakes or quick oats
- 1/2 cup raw sunflower seeds
- 1/3 cup raw pumpkin seeds
- 1/4 cup whole flax seeds or sesame seeds, or a mix of both
- 1/2 cup chopped raw nuts (pecans, slivered almonds, walnuts, etc)
- 1/2 to 3/4 cup unsweetened shredded coconut
- 1/2 to 1 cup dried fruit (cranberries, dates, blueberries, raisins, currents, dried apple, whatever)
- 1 tsp salt
- 1-2 Tbsp carob powder or cocoa
- 1-2 tsp cinnamon
- 1 tsp nutmeg
Wet
- 1/3 cup oil (vegetable, sunflower, safflower oil, whatever)
- 1/2-3/4 cup maple syrup or honey, or a mixture of both
- 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
Directions:
- Preheat oven to 250 degrees F.
- Mix dry ingredients in a big bowl, except dried fruit and coconut.
- Mix wet ingredients in a small bowl.
- Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients and mix well.
- Spread mixture onto a flat cookie sheets or a lasagna casserole dish.
- Bake for 20-30 minutes (depending on pan) until layer starts to brown.
- Stir or flip over granola using a spatula and bake for 20-30 more minutes.
- Remove from oven and let cool. The granola will become crunchier as it cools.
- Add dried fruit and coconut if using in your granola mix.
- Store in an air-tight container until ready to eat! For storage more than a month, store in the freezer.
Consider adding the following to your granola:
- chocolate chips
- brazil nuts
- hazelnuts
- macadamia nuts
- hemp seeds (add after baking)
- banana chips
- dried pineapple pieces
- dried pears
- dried apricot
- dried peaches
- dried cherries
- almond extract
By the way, your house will smell incredible with this ‘baking’ in the oven! Let us know your favourite granola combinations in the comments section below.
Resources:
Paul M. Ryan, Lis E. London, Trent C. Bjorndahl, Rupasri Mandal, Kiera Murphy, Gerald F. Fitzgerald, Fergus Shanahan, R. Paul Ross. David S. Wishart, Noel M. Caplice and Catherine Stanton (2017) Microbiome and metabolome modifying effects of several cardiovascular disease interventions in apo-E-/- mice Microbiome DOI 10.1186/s40168-017-0246-x
Singh, Rasnik K. et al. “Influence of Diet on the Gut Microbiome and Implications for Human Health.” Journal of Translational Medicine 15 (2017): 73. PMC. Web. 14 Oct. 2017.
