You know those recipes we hold near and dear to our hearts because they really are the greatest of all time? Well, our Greatest Recipe of All Time series is where we wax poetic about them. Today, senior associate food editor Claire Saffitz shares her mom's kinda-weird (and entirely delicious) recipe for granola.
Growing up I was not a typical "kid" eater. My parents didn't believe in kids' menus, nor did they believe in feeding me or my sisters anything separate from what they ate. My mom cooked a lot, and as a result I grew up eating simple but well-prepared "adult food." There were very few things I didn't eat, but the one meal I struggled to enjoy was breakfast.
I almost always preferred to eat leftovers instead of traditional breakfast foods. I'd take leftover linguini and clams over cereal, or cold roast chicken over toast and scrambled eggs. I can't say why, exactly—especially since as an adult I can't imagine not liking breakfast—but those foods had almost no appeal to me. The one exception was my mom's homemade granola.
Her granola recipe, which she has been making for nearly 30 years, is a contender for "greatest recipe of all time" in our family. The greatness of this recipe lies in its ultra toasty, lightly sweet flavor and its combination of crunchy and chewy textures. It's a straightforward recipe with just a couple of unexpected ingredients that help it stand way out from any other granola recipe I've ever tried, and miles ahead of anything you can buy off a shelf.
My mom starts with the usual base of 4 cups of old-fashioned rolled oats, then she adds a cup of chopped raw walnuts and a cup of raw sunflower seeds. (The sunflower seeds are important; they'll slow-roast in the oven and add serious savory depth, which balances out the sweetness). Next come a few wildcards: a cup of wheat germ, a cup of powdered milk, and a cup of bran cereal flakes. Stir it all up with ¾ cup each honey and vegetable oil, then spread it on two rimmed baking sheets and roast at 250° until deep golden brown, about 1 hour. Give it a stir every 15 minutes so all the ingredients toast evenly all the way through. The magic of this granola is in the clusters that form—the bits of wheat bran and powdered milk clump together when the wet ingredients are added. They find their way into the nooks and crannies of the walnuts and bran flakes with each successive stir, toasting into crunchy nuggets.
When the granola comes out of the oven, don't stir it again until it's cooled. You'll end up with an incredible variety of crunchy, toasty clusters in every shape and size. (My favorite thing to do then and now is to shake the container of granola so the clusters rise to the top and I could pick them out. I have and always will be a picker.) Once the mixture had cooled, my mom would add about a cup of dried raisins for chewy contrast, but these days I use dried tart cherries and/or chopped dried apricots.
If you subscribe to the somewhat questionable notion that granola is "healthy," then you could consider this version one of the healthier ones. You could swap olive oil for vegetable oil. Since honey is the only sweetener, it's not overly sweet. (Plus bran flakes are healthy, right? And the powdered milk adds protein, maybe?) It never mattered to us, though. My family didn't eat it because it was healthy, it just tasted great. We'd treat it like cereal, doused in a shallow pool of whole milk. I still eat it that way, but also stirred into yogurt with berries or just plain by the handful. It holds its crunch and never gets soggy, plus it keeps for at least a week if stored in an airtight container at room temperature. It never lasts that long though, and you might find yourself reaching for a handful several times a day.
No other granola will ever taste right to me. That's how good this one is, and that's why it's the greatest recipe of all time.