Q: I love granola that comes in big, crunchy clumps. So when I purchased some granola at a fancy gourmet market yesterday, I was so disappointed to discover that it is just coated oats mixed in with other ingredients--no clumps!
Is there a way I can doctor up this store-bought granola to turn into the wonderful chunky granola I crave? — Carolyn
Editor: Carolyn, we love big clusters of granola, too! We have a few ideas on how to doctor your mix to get it just the way we like it.
First, does it look like most of the ingredients have a coating on them? If so, the reason that your granola isn't clumpy already is because it was deliberately stirred and broken apart while it was baking, and it might be possible to make it re-clump! Try putting a scoop in the microwave and heating it in 30 second bursts on high. If it starts to get sticky, you're golden. Let it cool and the granola should stick together. Then just break it apart into clumps with your fingers!
If it doesn't look like the granola ingredients are all coated or if that coating seems really thin, you can essentially use this mix as a base to make your own granola. For every 6 cups or so of oat mix, whisk together 1/4 cup of canola or olive oil, 1/4 cup brown sugar, and 1/4 cup honey in a small bowl. Toss this syrup together with the oat mix, spread it out on a sheet pan, and bake at 300° for 45-60 minutes, until the mix is crispy. Stir occasionally, but delicately - you don't want to break up the granola too much, after all!
We've also noticed that clumpier granola seems to have a higher percentage of oats to other ingredients. Oats stick to each other much easier and more firmly than they do with other, heavier ingredients. If it seems like your mix doesn't have a lot of oats, try adding another cup or two of rolled oats before cooking.
Give one of these methods a try and let us know how it works out! Anyone else have ideas for getting granola to re-cluster?
Related: Recipe: Crunchy Granola Bars
(Image: Flickr member sleepyneko licensed under Creative Commons)
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I don't know about getting already purchased granola to clump (I would probably just call it a loss and use it to make a fruit crumble or cookies), but the best recipe I have found for nice clumping granola is this one from The Traveler's Lunchbox blog:
http://www.travelerslunchbox.com/journal/2007/6/9/the-lip-ladys-secret-granola.html
It's different than any recipe I have seen and oh so good.
I noticed that the recipe linked to by Grumpy Girl calls for grinding a portion of the oats into a fine power. This powder, the whole oats, and the other dry ingredients are then bound together with a butter/sugar syrup. My guess is that mixing the syrup with the flour-like oat powder makes for a good "glue" that holds the chunckier ingredients together; voila, clumpy granola. If you follow the editor's suggestion to add some more oats to your current mix in addition to doing the oil/sugar/honey treatment, you might consider grinding some of the oats up into a powder to create a similiar "glue." Good luck!
Crap, I just posted a comment, but it seems to have been eaten. Sorry if this comes up twice.
I noticed when reading the recipe posted by Grumpy Girl that a portion of the oats are ground up into a fine powder. This powder, the whole oats, and the rest of the dry ingredients are then bound together by a butter/sugar syrup. My guess is that the syrup combines with the oat powder to form a "glue" of sorts that holds the chunkier ingredients together; voila, clumpy granola.
If you take the editor's suggestion to add more oats to your current mixture in addition to using the oil/honey/sugar syrup, I'd suggest grinding a portion of the additional oats into a powder so that you can create a similar "glue" to bind the granola into clumps. Good luck!
I tried the 'ground oats' method, and it didnt work for me. I haven't tried it yet, but I thought about beating up an egg white and adding it to the granola recipe. This may act as a binder to keep some of the mix together. Since it would be such a small amount, it wouldnt affect to texture too much.
you could use oat bran as the ground oats portion and you can just buy that at tj's.
I've tried substituting oat bran for the ground oats called for in that recipe from The Traveler's Lunchbox and it didn't work.
The recipe I use now produces a clusterless granola but I find it's more clumpy when I add a bit of honey while it's fresh out of the oven. I mix it up, press the oats down, and leave it to cool. It's still not as clumpy as I'd like it to be, but I think that to get more clumps you'd have to add more sugar/more fat (like oil or butter).
I've tried a million techniques as well for upping the clump ratio--and in the end have found using a "binder" like oat bran and/or ground flax, the usual sugar/oil ratios as suggested in the post, and, after the initial mixing, adding several splashes of good ole' water to the mix is the perfect solution. You can adjust the amount of wetness depending on the size/structure of the clumps you want--then squeeze fistfuls from the bowl onto the pan or pinch the mix between your fingers. You may find you want to add extra spices and/or sweeteners to the mix with this method as the water does dilute the overall flavor just a bit—baking time may be increased as well as the granola needs longer to “dry out” (though on the plus side the risk of burning is less). After baking you may find you need to break up the wonderfully large clumps you’ve created into bite size portions.