These Straightforward 5-Ingredient Crackers Are Scottish Grandma–Accepted

Each time my husband and I journey to Scotland to see his household, his grandmother Gaga greets us with a large field of home made oatcakes: savory, crumbly crackers made with oats, water, and melted fats, akin to shortening, butter, or lard. Although oatcakes don’t appear to be a lot—they’re brown pucks of cooked oats—they’re hearty and satisfying, and intensely 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 range in thickness. Sadly for me and my husband, they’re extraordinarily troublesome 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 at any time when I needed, I’d must 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 scorching water, then rolling, reducing, and cooking them on a griddle or skillet. The type of oats and the fats you employ, in addition to the cooking methodology, nonetheless, can drastically influence the biscuit’s texture. With some testing and tweaking to Gaga’s recipe, I’ve developed a  foolproof methodology for making ready crisp, buttery oatcakes that style similar to they had been made by your very personal Scottish grandmother.

How you can Make the Very Greatest 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 cook dinner extra rapidly, they soak up liquid extra readily than rolled oats or steel-cut oats when mixed with scorching water, making the dough extra cohesive and simpler to work with. When you do have Scottish-style oats available, you possibly can positively 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 troublesome (if not not possible!) to work with.

Attain for clarified butter or ghee. In my testing, lard, bacon fats, shortening, and vegetable oil produced the crispiest oatcakes—however essentially the most scrumptious ones had been made with butter. Not like animal fats, shortening, and oil, butter just isn’t 100% fats. Whereas fats share varies amongst butters, American butter usually comprises 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 nice crispness whereas additionally offering a wealthy, buttery taste. For ease, I like to recommend utilizing store-bought clarified butter or ghee, however you may also make your personal. 

Roll and chill the oatcakes—then bake them. Historically, cooks knead the oatcake dough collectively on a floured floor, roll it out, then minimize it into rounds or triangles. They then switch the minimize oatcakes to a scorching griddle to cook dinner, a fragile operation that may seemingly depart 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 private home with the nice and cozy, buttery odor of savory Scottish biscuits baking.

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