The Extra Step You Can't Forget When Making Oatmeal Cookies

If you are making oatmeal cookies for me, then the one step you can absolutely skip is adding the dried fruit! Chocolate chips or walnuts or both would be preferable, while salty oatmeal scotchies will also do, but raisins are a big nope. Assuming you're not about to gift some stranger with baked goods, however, I have another, more general tip to pass along that concerns the oatmeal itself: Toast it. Yep, that's pretty much it — a nice concise two-word tip that works just as well for those who love oatmeal-raisin cookies as it does for all my fellow raisin haters.

Oh wait, you want to know why you should toast the oats? Okay, that's easy — toasted oats simply taste better, and in turn, they improve the flavor of the cookies. Toasted oats are often described as having a nutty flavor, although this may have something to do with the fact that we typically eat nuts that are toasted or roasted so it's just an automatic association our tastebuds make. It might be better to describe the taste of toasted oatmeal as similar to cereal or reminiscent of a granola bar, since granola bars are often made with toasted oats. At any rate, we don't need to spend all day throwing around random comparisons when we can just agree that toastier is tastier, and leave it at that.

Of course, I wasn't going to leave you hanging without some instructions for oat toasting. In fact, I've got two different methods to share. The first one involves toasting your oats in a frying pan. Set the burner to medium, dump the oats in a dry pan, and then stir them around for a few minutes. This method comes with one hard-earned caveat, however: Don't take your eye off the pan! Or your nose, for that matter. Oats burn really, really quickly, and burnt oats taste lousy. As soon as the oats start to smell just a little bit toasted and are ever-so-slightly brown, turn off the heat.

While the pan-toasting method takes just a few minutes, the easily distracted (such as myself) might be better off with the slower oven-toasting method. Spread your oats in a single layer over a baking sheet, and cook them at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for about 8 to 10 minutes. At this point, stir them around, and then cook them for another 8 to 10 minutes. If you've never met a pan you didn't want to line with parchment paper, you can go ahead and use the stuff here, but I never bother with it, and I haven't had a problem with oats sticking to the pan. Once again, though, you'll need to use your nose to make sure the oats don't burn instead of just relying on an oven timer.