Bircher muesli

Ingredients

• Rolled oats200 g
• Water or apple juice300 ml
• Apples3
• Lemon1
• Cream150 ml
• Yoghurt250 ml
• Condensed milk3 tbsp
• Hazelnuts80 g
• Berries200 g
• Honey2 tbsp

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Cover the oats with water or apple juice and leave them overnight in the fridge.

   6 min

2. 2

   In the morning stir in the yoghurt, cream and condensed milk until even.

   5 min

3. 3

   Grate the apples, skins and all, on a coarse grater straight into the bowl.

   8 min

4. 4

   Squeeze lemon juice over the grated apple at once and stir it through so it does not brown.

   3 min

5. 5

   Toast the hazelnuts in a dry pan for five minutes and chop them coarsely.

   8 min

6. 6

   Stir in the honey, divide it between bowls and top with the nuts and berries.

   5 min

About the dish

The oats are soaked in water or juice rather than milk. The milk goes in in the morning: overnight it would sour, where water lets the oats swell without risk.

The apple is grated immediately before serving and stirred straight in. Lemon juice in the soak keeps it from browning, but grated ahead it loses its freshness anyway.

Maximilian Bircher-Benner devised the dish around 1900 for the patients of his sanatorium. Apple was the main element and the oats merely a binder — modern proportions are the reverse.

Worth knowing

• — Grate the apple with its skin. Most of the aroma is there, and peeled apple gives a watery, flavourless mass.
• — The mixture should stay fairly loose. Let a thickened one down with milk rather than water; water makes it taste hollow.
• — Real Bircher muesli is not sweet. The honey and condensed milk go in sparingly: this is breakfast, not a dessert.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

480 kcal

Protein

14 g

Fat

22 g

Carbs

58 g

More from Switzerland

• Cheese fondue — Gruyère and Vacherin melted in white wine with starch. The acidity of the wine keeps the cheese from seizing.
• Rösti — A potato cake of coarsely grated potato fried crisp on both sides. The potatoes are boiled the day before.
• Zürcher Geschnetzeltes — Veal strips in a creamy mushroom sauce with white wine, served with rösti.