Have You Tried Bircher Muesli for Breakfast?

Bircher Muesli is my preferred breakfast as Autumn sets in. It’s a great way to merge summer fruit and yoghurt with porridge oats. It’s very moist and served cold.

In my Swiss cookbooks Dr Bircher-Benner is always acknowledged as the ‘inventor’ of this breakfast. He advocated eating uncooked cereals, fruit, vegetables and other natural health foods.

In a typical Swiss recipe you soak oatmeal in water overnight. In the morning you grate an apple and dress it with a little lemon juice (to avoid browning) and then mix it with the oatmeal along with cream and honey. Top the lot with nuts. In winter when fresh fruit is not available you might add sultanas or prunes.

Many recipe books now feature Bircher Muesli in their Breakfast section. Indeed, I’ve just opened the Good Weekend magazine in the Sydney Morning Herald and there’s a recipe for it from Guillaume Brahimi, the chef at Guillaume at Bennelong in Sydney.

Basically the concept is always the same - to soak raw oats (not oatmeal as in the Swiss version) overnight. After that it seems that anything and everything goes but I prefer my Bircher Muesli on the ‘less is more’ principle.

So here’s my recipe for Bircher Muesli

For each person

• ½ cup rolled oats
• ¼ cup milk
• ¼ cup plain yoghurt

Mix these three ingredients well and soak overnight

In the morning I add a fresh fruit like diced apple (or blueberries or banana or rhubarb) and slivered almonds

Drizzle with maple syrup

Tips

• I nearly always add some sultanas to the mix to soak overnight
• Barambah Greek Style yoghurt or Bush Honey yoghurt are my favourites
• You can substitute cream for milk, apple or orange juice for milk, so long as all the liquid you add equals the quantity of oats. The mixture should be thick and creamy, not runny
• Honey is good if you don’t have maple syrup on hand
• I find this amount can last me two days but you can double the mixture if you want more on hand

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