I like the idea for cooking oatmeal overnight in a crock pot, but the cleanup is a pain and sometimes I don't get it cleaned in time to use the following morning. I wanted to avoid the use of plastic bag liners because that is just wasteful and generates unnecessary garbage. I was looking up prices for additional ceramic inserts, and saw in one Amazon review that a person was using ramekins double boiler style to speed up his clean-up.

That is when I wondered how a similar setup with mason jars would work. The results were better than I hoped.

Step 1: Parts and Ingredients

1 small crock pot (mine is a 5-cup pot)

1 pint mason jar

1 bowl that fits on top of crock pot

oatmeal mix:

1/2 cup oatmeal

1 cup water (you may have to experiment with more or less depending on how you like your oatmeal consistency)

dried fruit

honey/sugar to taste

Step 2: Setting It All Up

1) Place your oatmeal mix in the mason jar. Make sure you give it a quick stir.

2) Place the mason jar in the crock pot

3) Fill up the area surrounding the mason jar in the crock pot with water.

Step 3: Cover It

This may not be an issue with larger crock pots, but the mason jar was slightly too tall for mine. Luckily, one of my bowls fit perfectly

Step 4:

Plug in the Crock pot when you go to bed.

8 hours later, when you wake up, the oatmeal will be perfectly cooked.

Use an oven mitt when you take out the mason jar. It will be hot!

You can dump it in a bowl and eat it immediately, or you can put a lid on the jar and take it on the road.

When I was cooking the oatmeal in only the crock pot, sometime the oatmeal would really stick to the bottom or even burn onto the ceramic insert. This made the cleanup really difficult. So far with the mason jars, that has not been a problem. Instead, I just fill the jar to let it soak for a few minutes, give it a good shake, and anything that was sticking pours right out.