the.com/groats
the medieval breakfast that outlived the empires that taxed it.
means Groats are hulled, often coarsely cracked whole grains — most often oats, but also wheat, barley, or buckwheat — that are cooked into porridge or used whole in cooking.
from From Old English 'grot,' meaning a particle or fragment, the same root family that gives us 'grit' and 'groats' as siblings — all describing something broken into small bits. The word kept its plain Germanic bones while empires came and went; a 'groat' the coin is a separate matter, borrowed from Middle Dutch 'groot' meaning 'great' (a thick penny), and the two only happen to look alike.
- actual meaning
- hulled whole grain, often oat or buckwheat
- old coin
- groat was an English fourpenny coin too
- toughness
- the chewiest, least processed form of the grain
- comeback
- now rebranded as trendy health-food superseeds
- viking fuel
- porridge from groats powered northern winters
scottish oats — staple grain in scotland for centuries, still primary ingredient in traditional porridge and haggis
steel-cut oats — groats chopped into 2-3 pieces, popular breakfast in ireland and increasingly in north america
rolled oats — steamed and flattened groats, invented in 1877 by the quaker oats company in ohio