Video:Homemade Nutty Maple Granola

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Transcript:Homemade Nutty Maple Granola

I was in the store the other day, and I was watching someone buy this tiny package of designer granola - incredibly expensive, not that good as far as ingredients - and I though to myself, I bet that poor soul doesn't even know how simple this is to make at home. Yeah, you can make it at home - it's so easy, so much better, so much less expensive than the store. Let me show you how to put this together.

Mix Ingredients for Nutty Maple Granola

Granola is incredibly easy, so we're going to start with some sugar - brown sugar, a quarter cup of packed brown sugar. And then we're going to add a quarter-cup of real maple syrup, and we're also going to put in two tablespoons of plain vegetable oil. I'm also going to put in here - very important, may be surprising - but a half a teaspoon of salt. That's really going to help bring out the sweetness in the granola.

Okay, so we're going to whisk that together - and really you're just doing this until the brown sugar dissolves. Nothing complicated here. Alright, so into our sugar mixture and maple mixture we're going to do a half a cup of slivered almonds. We're also going to put in a half a cup of pumpkin seeds, which are really good for you. They also look really cool and give us a great kind of finished effect. So those are our nuts.

Now we're going to add one and a half cups of rolled oats - the most important ingredient - this is the main ingredient to granola. And then we're going to give that a toss. The only other ingredient in here is going to be raisins. But you don't want to bake it with the raisins in there - the raisins get tossed in at the end. Now this may seem like a simple step here, mixing this, but take your time and make sure it's entirely coated, so that it toasts properly.

Toast the Granola

So once that's perfectly coated, we're going to dump that on a silicone-lined tray - spread it out evenly. If you don't have a silicone mat, you can go ahead and just lightly spray your sheet pan with the non-stick vegetable spray. This is going to go in a 250 degree oven, and it's going to toast really slowly, for between and hour and an hour and a half. And it's going to be delicious - I'm making myself hungry. So this is going to go in the oven at 250 - we're going to set our timer for 15 minutes, and then we're going to give it a toss with a fork.

Okay, so it's been 15 minutes - we're going to take the tip of our fork and just stir it around. And it is important that we keep doing this every 15 minutes - you'll see why. You want that kind of golden brown, beautifully toasted - you can hear how crispy that is. So while it's warm, go ahead and transfer it into a bowl. What I have here is a half a cup of regular raisins - and that is finished granola.

Tasty Ways to Eat Granola

You can eat this as a cereal - it's fantastic as a breakfast cereal - that's really the most popular use. But what's really cool to do with this is to make what we call a parfait. Some plain yogurt and some fresh berries - really simple, really nice, really just super-healthy but still really satisfying - like you get to eat a dessert, but you can still feel kind of good about it.

So there we are, our finished nutty maple granola, our beautiful parfait - by the way, parfait in French means perfect, so you know it's going to be good. It's called "perfect."

I'm Chef John Mitzewich - for more information, please go to food.about.com.