CULINARY INFO Oats

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Oats
Native to Central Europe, oats are a Scottish staple and is milled to varying degrees of fineness. Cooked in water or milk it becomes porridge, it is also an ingredient of haggis, oatcakes and the whisky drink: Athol Brose.


A cereal grain used as a food for humans and livestock, oats are members of the genus Avena of the GRASS family, Gramineae. Their cultivation occurred relatively recently compared with that of other cereals, such as wheat. Oats were first grown in northern Europe in conjunction with the increasing use of horses as draft animals, perhaps in the 2d millennium BC. The plant is best suited to a moist, cool climate, and it has rarely been successfully cultivated in the southern regions of Europe. The variety known as red oats is heat tolerant and is grown in warm, moist climates. Oats, like rye, will produce yields in poor soils and are valuable as a rotation crop.

The slender oat stalk grows up to 1.2 m (4 ft) high