Your Hot Oatmeal Needs Frozen Berries

Weekday breakfasts have to meet three major criteria to be considered “good.” They must be easy and quick to prepare, filling enough to keep you going until lunch, and tasty enough that you don’t start your day off on a depressing note. Oatmeal breezes by the first two, but usually needs a little help to hit the third. This is where the add-ins enter the chat.

Sugar, honey, nuts, chocolate chips, and fruit of all kinds are just a few of the common additions you may find in a bowl of oatmeal, but frozen fruit is one add-in that pulls double duty. According to this clever Reddit user, frozen fruit has a slight edge on the fresh stuff, at least in terms of morning time management:

Add frozen berries into your hot oatmeal to defrost the berries while simultaneously cooling the oatmeal to an edible temperature

That’s it. I like to do this since I have a pretty quick morning routing and don’t want to wait for the oatmeal to cool naturally. I also happen to like oatmeal and berries. Alternatively, you can add a bit less liquid into the oatmeal when prepping it and add a few ice cubes at the end to expedite the cooling process.

Milk and cream have similar cooling capabilities, but even fridge-cold dairy can’t cool as quickly and efficiently as something that is frozen (that’s just physics). Berries also flavor without diluting, creating a beautiful, vivid swirl of concentrated berry juice as you mix them into your beige bowl of porridge.

My only edit to this move is that I’d make sure to add something sweet—a little sugar, honey, or maple syrup—just to help the berries achieve their full potential. Frozen berries tend to be pretty tart, and a little sugar will help ensure your bowl of oatmeal reaches all three weekday breakfast criteria.