the savoury oat soup of the German-speaking lands: rolled oats toasted in butter and simmered in broth with root vegetables until thick and velvety, finished with nutmeg and parsley — the comfort food of the oat's own homeland
Origin: Germany and Austria
From the journey of Oat.
It was in the cool, damp heart of temperate Central Europe that the common oat first became a crop rather than a weed, and the German-speaking lands kept the grain at the table long after: not as the porridge of the Atlantic fringe but, most characteristically, as a soup. Haferflockensuppe, 'oat-flake soup', is a savoury oat soup of the plainest and most nourishing kind, a fixture of the German, Austrian, and Swiss home kitchen and of the old invalid cookery in which a bowl of it was the first food given to the recovering and the very young. It belongs to the same frugal, warming tradition as the region's other flour and grain soups, the Mehlsuppe and the Griessuppe, and it turns a handful of oats and whatever broth is to hand into a genuine meal. The method rests on one small but decisive step: the oats are first toasted in butter until they turn golden and smell nutty, which transforms the flavour of the soup from bland to deep and roasted, before the broth is added and the whole simmered until the oats swell and dissolve into a thick, velvety, faintly creamy body. Root vegetables (carrot, celeriac, leek, and onion) are sweated in the butter first for a fuller soup, and the finished bowl is seasoned in the German manner with nutmeg, white pepper, and a shower of chopped parsley, sometimes enriched at the end with a little cream or an egg yolk. A sweet version, made with milk and sugar in place of broth and vegetables, is a nursery breakfast across the region; but it is the savoury soup that best shows how the land where the oat was tamed still eats its own grain.
For a smoother, more elegant soup, blend it before the final seasoning; for a rustic one, leave it as it is. The sweet nursery version replaces the stock and vegetables with milk and a little sugar and is served for breakfast, sometimes with cinnamon or a spoonful of fruit. Fine or medium oatmeal can be used in place of rolled oats for a smoother texture, and will need a little longer to soften. A spoonful of the toasted oats reserved before the stock goes in makes a pleasant crunchy garnish. The soup reheats well and thickens on keeping, so loosen it with stock when warming through.
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