Slow Cooker Oatmeal

I like oatmeal for breakfast. I wouldn't say I love it for breakfast because I LOVE pancakes and bacon and bagels and other bad things for you for breakfast. But as far as healthy options go, oatmeal is pretty good. I don't always have time to make it in the mornings though and the instant oatmeal packets are good but they just don't feel as filling or healthy. Probably about a year ago now, I saw a recipe on Pinterest for slow cooker oatmeal. I thought, "Finally! The solution to my problems!" And I tried the recipe just a couple of days later. And it did not turn out well AT ALL. The recipe called for 2 cups of steel cut oats and 6-8 cups of water with a note saying if you like your oats heartier use less water. So I used only 6 cups of water. It was like cement the next morning. I ate a bowl and the flavour wasn't terrible, but it was HEAVY. We couldn't even eat the leftovers because even with adding extra water when heating it up, it was even thicker than the first day. So a few weeks later I decided to try it again but with the 8 cups of water this time. The first morning they were fine, a little heavy, but fine. The leftovers though? Forget about it. That was pretty much the end of my slow cooker oatmeal experiments. I pinned a couple of other recipes thinking I would try them out but I wasn't quite over the cement I'd produced before. The last few weeks I have made this delicious granola (I'll have to post the recipe later because it's sooo good, calorie heavy, but full of good things) and that's what we've been eating for breakfast. Make a big batch on Sunday and we both eat it all week. With the holiday though, I didn't have the time or energy to make granola to get us through the week. So, I decided it was time to try the slow cooker oatmeal again. This time I did A LOT of research. I must have looked at at least 10 different recipes. All ones I found on Pinterest by searching "slow cooker oatmeal" in case you're interested in a lot of recipes. After a lot of research, I thought a good ratio worth trying would be 1 c steel cut oats and 5 c water. And success! The oatmeal this morning was a great texture and tasted great! And I just heard from my husband who had them and it's a win in his book too!

Ingredients:
1 cup steel cut oats (any other kind of oats will fall apart, the steel cut are hearty and can stand up to the long cooking time)
5 c water
1/3 c brown sugar
1/4 c maple syrup
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp kosher salt

Spray the insert of a slow cooker with non-stick spray. Put in all the ingredients and stir well. You could whisk the cinnamon to get rid of all the clumps, but I didn't worry about it. Turn it on low, go to sleep for 8 hours, wake up, and turn the slow cooker off. Stir it up well and you're ready to go! The top part of the oatmeal looked really dark from the cinnamon, but it mixed in just fine.