Savoury oats with mushrooms and a soft egg

The mushrooms at Carriageworks Farmers Market on Wilson Street, Eveleigh, were still damp with soil when I bought them last Saturday, and that’s the whole reason this recipe exists. I’d been eating the same sweet oats for weeks, honey and banana on repeat, and I was bored of my own breakfast. So I did what I always do when I’m stuck: I made it savoury.

Savoury oats with mushrooms and a soft egg is not a new idea, I know. But most versions I’ve tried online are either bland porridge with a fried egg dropped on top as an afterthought, or so fussed over with truffle oil and thirty ingredients that you’d never make it on a Tuesday. This one sits in the middle. It’s a proper breakfast, high in fibre, built from things you probably already have in the crisper, and it comes together in the time it takes to make a coffee and check your phone twice.

Why savoury oats work for a weekday breakfast

Oats get pitched as a sweet food in Australia, which I reckon is a bit of a shame. Cooked in stock instead of milk or water, with garlic and mushrooms going soft in the same pan, they behave more like a risotto than a bowl of porridge. The starch from the oats still does its thing, so you get that same creamy, clingy texture, but the flavour goes savoury and deep instead of sugary.

There’s a fibre argument here too. The Australian Dietary Guidelines, via eatforhealth.gov.au, put most of us well under the recommended daily fibre intake, and a base of rolled oats with mushrooms and spinach folded through gets you a decent chunk of that in one sitting, without it feeling like a chore. If you’re already reading up on gut health or trying to eat more mindfully day to day, this is the kind of breakfast that quietly does the work without demanding much of you first thing.

The mushrooms are the whole point

What I love about this recipe is the smell when the mushrooms hit the hot pan, that slightly nutty, earthy steam that means you’re actually cooking, not just assembling. Don’t crowd them. Give them room to brown properly rather than stew in their own liquid, because that caramelisation is where most of the savoury depth comes from. I use a mix of swiss brown and shiitake when I can get them, but button mushrooms sliced thick will do the job on a normal week.

A small aside: I’ve been growing a pot of Thai bird’s eye chillies on my balcony in Sydney’s inner west for about two years now, more successfully than I’ve ever managed basil, and a pinch of the dried flakes goes into almost everything I cook these days, this included. It’s not essential. But it wakes the whole dish up, and if you’ve got a chilli plant sulking on your own balcony, this is a fair use for it.

Ingredients

• 3/4 cup (75g) rolled oats
• 1 1/2 cups (375ml) chicken or vegetable stock
• 1/2 cup (125ml) water
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 small brown onion, finely diced
• 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
• 200g mixed mushrooms (swiss brown, shiitake or button), sliced
• pinch dried chilli flakes, optional
• 1 handful baby spinach leaves
• 20g parmesan, finely grated
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp butter, for the eggs
• 1 tsp fresh thyme leaves or snipped chives
• salt and black pepper
• splash of soy sauce or tamari, to taste

Method

1. Heat the olive oil in a saucepan over medium heat. Add the onion and cook for 3 to 4 minutes until soft and translucent.
2. Add the garlic and mushrooms. Turn the heat up slightly and cook, stirring only occasionally, for 5 to 6 minutes until the mushrooms are deeply browned and any liquid they release has cooked off. This is the step people rush. Don’t.
3. Stir in the chilli flakes, if using, then tip in the rolled oats and stir for a minute to toast them lightly in the pan.
4. Pour in the stock and water. Bring to a gentle simmer, then reduce heat to low and cook, stirring every minute or so, for 8 to 10 minutes, until the oats are thick and creamy and most of the liquid has absorbed.
5. While the oats finish, fry or poach your eggs. For fried, melt the butter in a small non-stick pan over medium-low heat and cook the eggs for 2 to 3 minutes until the whites are set and the yolk is still soft.
6. Stir the baby spinach and parmesan through the oats off the heat, letting the spinach wilt in the residual warmth. Season with salt, pepper and a splash of soy sauce to taste.
7. Divide the oats between two bowls, top each with a soft egg, scatter with thyme or chives, and finish with another small pinch of chilli if you like it hot.

Serves 2. Prep 10 minutes, cook 20 minutes.

Getting the egg right without overthinking it

I’m precise about the egg because it’s the part that separates this from a slightly boring bowl of savoury porridge. You want the yolk still moving when you cut into it, so it runs down through the oats and does half the sauce-making for you. If poaching feels like too much effort at 7am, I honestly don’t blame you, a soft-fried egg gets you ninety per cent of the way there with none of the vinegar-and-swirling drama. Save true poaching for a slower Sunday, maybe alongside something like the smoky baked beans with soft poached egg, which uses the same technique but has more time to give it.

Making it ahead without it going gluey

This is genuinely make-ahead friendly, with one caveat. Cook the mushroom and oat base in full, then cool and store in the fridge for up to three days. When you’re ready to eat, reheat gently in a small pan with a splash of extra stock or water, stirring it back to life, then cook your egg fresh. Reheated oats that have gone completely solid in the container are not worth saving, in my view, they need that extra liquid to loosen back up or the texture turns gummy rather than creamy. Fresh eggs each morning, reheated base, five minutes total. That’s the honest trade-off and it’s a fair one.

A vegetable-forward variation

On weeks when I’ve got extra vegetables that need using, I’ll stir a handful of grated zucchini or some leftover roast pumpkin through with the spinach at the end. It bulks the dish out and stretches it to feed three instead of two. If you like a grain bowl approach to breakfast generally, this sits nicely alongside things like the warm grain bowl with roasted roots and labne in terms of the whole soft, savoury, slightly indulgent breakfast category. Both make good use of whatever’s sitting in the vegetable drawer before it turns.

Nutrition Australia’s general guidance is that most adults would benefit from more wholegrains and fewer refined ones across the week, and this is one small, genuinely enjoyable way to move that needle without it feeling like homework. If you want the numbers behind the fibre argument in more detail, CSIRO’s published nutrition research at csiro.au is worth a read, it’s more useful than most of what gets shared around on fibre and gut health generally.

Where this fits into the rest of the week

I tend to make this on a Monday or Tuesday when the fridge is still full from the weekend shop, then move toward something lighter like the chickpea and roast capsicum salad by Thursday when things are getting thin. If breakfast is the meal you’re most likely to skip under stress, and for a lot of people it is, building one that’s this quick and this satisfying is a small, practical piece of looking after yourself, in the same spirit as the ideas in what mindful eating actually looks like day to day.

Anyway. Put the kettle on, get the mushrooms going, and don’t walk away from the pan while they brown. That’s the only part that actually matters.

— Mei Lin, Golden Door Living kitchen