These Straightforward 5-Ingredient Crackers Are Scottish Grandma–Authorised

At any time when my husband and I journey to Scotland to see his household, his grandmother Gaga greets us with an enormous field of home made oatcakes: savory, crumbly crackers made with oats, water, and melted fats, corresponding to shortening, butter, or lard. Although oatcakes don’t seem like a lot—they’re brown pucks of cooked oats—they’re hearty and satisfying, and very snackable.

These cracker-like savory cookies, or biscuits in British parlance, are made and bought all through the UK, the place they’re loved on their very own or with cheese. They are often sq., rectangular, or spherical, and differ in thickness. Sadly for me and my husband, they’re extraordinarily tough to search out in america. (I’ve solely had luck at specialty shops and on-line.) I noticed that if I needed to have oatcakes each time I needed, I’d need to make them myself. 

Fortunately, Gaga—the identical genius behind my one-bowl shortbread recipe—fortunately shared her oatcake recipe with me. Making oatcakes is a comparatively easy course of that requires simply stirring collectively oats, baking soda, salt, melted fats, and sizzling water, then rolling, reducing, and cooking them on a griddle or skillet. The type of oats and the fats you utilize, in addition to the cooking technique, nonetheless, can drastically impression the biscuit’s texture. With some testing and tweaking to Gaga’s recipe, I’ve developed a  foolproof technique for getting ready crisp, buttery oatcakes that style identical to they had been made by your very personal Scottish grandmother.

Methods to Make the Very Finest Scottish Oatcakes

Use quick-cooking oats. Historically, oatcakes are made with Scottish oatmeal, that are stoneground and finer than rolled oats and steel-cut oats. Scottish oats aren’t as available in American grocery shops, so I opted for quick-cooking oats. Like Scottish oats, they’re finer in texture. As a result of quick-cooking oats are made to prepare dinner extra rapidly, they take up liquid extra readily than rolled oats or steel-cut oats when mixed with sizzling water, making the dough extra cohesive and simpler to work with. In the event you do have Scottish-style oats readily available, you may undoubtedly use these as a substitute of quick-cooking oats, however keep away from rolled oats or steel-cut oats, as utilizing these will end in a dough that’s tough (if not inconceivable!) to work with.

Attain for clarified butter or ghee. In my testing, lard, bacon fats, shortening, and vegetable oil produced the crispiest oatcakes—however probably the most scrumptious ones had been made with butter. In contrast to animal fats, shortening, and oil, butter isn’t 100% fats. Whereas fats share varies amongst butters, American butter sometimes incorporates 80% fats, with the remaining quantity consisting of water and milk proteins. That water steams because the biscuit bakes, leading to a barely softer oatcake. A contented compromise is utilizing clarified butter or ghee: Each are practically 100% butterfat and provides the oatcakes a pleasing crispness whereas additionally offering a wealthy, buttery taste. For ease, I like to recommend utilizing store-bought clarified butter or ghee, however you too can make your individual. 

Roll and chill the oatcakes—then bake them. Historically, cooks knead the oatcake dough collectively on a floured floor, roll it out, then lower it into rounds or triangles. They then switch the lower oatcakes to a sizzling griddle to prepare dinner, a fragile operation that may seemingly go away your ground scattered with extra raw oatcakes than you’d like. To make the oatcakes simpler to chop and switch, I roll the dough between two sheets of parchment, then freeze it till it’s simply agency sufficient to chop. And as a substitute of cooking the oatcakes on a griddle, I bake them on a sheet pan, which cooks them extra evenly, requires zero flipping, and fills your property with the nice and cozy, buttery scent of savory Scottish biscuits baking.

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