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World Porridge Day
"In boilin' water, salted weel,
'Tween fingers rins the ruchsome meal,
While the brisk spurtle gars them wheel
In jaups an' rings -
Ae guid half-hour, syne bowls may reel
Wi' food for kings."
~ Scotch Porridge, Robert Bird
Fuel up with a bowl of brochan lom—a smooth and hearty oatmeal porridge that has long been one of the most traditional ways to start the day. The tartan inspired by it carries the soft visual texture and natural shading of porridge's warm colours, evoking the look of steel-cut or pinhead oats in a favourite blue bowl!
Not all “porridge,” however, has been so comforting. When Sir Arthur Conan Doyle visited a First World War armaments factory at Gretna, on the Scottish border, he famously described the workers’ dangerous concoction of nitroglycerine and gun-cotton as “the Devil’s Porridge.”
World Porridge Day offers the perfect celebration for more traditional and creative versions. Each year in Carrbridge, a small village in the Scottish Highlands, cooks gather for the World Porridge Making Championships. The victor walks away with the coveted golden spurtle— the slender wooden mixing stick that has stirred Scottish porridge for centuries.
This year in the specialty category, the champion turned porridge into a toasted sandwich (jaffle). She invented a yoghurt flatbread that could cook within competition time, then filled it with rum-flavoured bananas, oatmeal, wattle seed, and Davidson plum sugar!
With a history of porridge-eating that stretches back thousands of years, it’s no surprise that lore and superstition have clung to it as well. One old belief insists you must always stir your porridge clockwise—lest you risk inviting the devil himself to breakfast! So whether you take yours traditionally plain with only a bit salt, favour mid-century modern additions of butter, cream and brown sugar, today's fashion of nuts and berries, or something more exotic, eat up! We need fuel for the day! 💙 💛 🤍 🤎 🏆 🥣 🥣 🥣
The Scottish Highland village of Carrbridge has teamed up with the Scottish-based charity, Mary’s Meals, to establish World Porridge Day on October 10th. The mission of World Porridge Day is to to help feed hungry children in some of the poorest countries across the globe.
On World Porridge Day, Carrbridge hosts the Porridge Making Championship. Past champions have created recipes for Sticky Toffee Porridge, Fruity Date Porridge and Pinhead Risotto with Lemon and Thyme and Parmesan!
The grand prize for the winner of the World porridge Championship is the golden spurtle.
Dating from the at least the fifteenth century, a spurtle is a Scots kitchen tool, a narrow rod-shaped implement, used specifically for stirring porridge and soups.
Although many cultures have their own form of porridge (either sweet or savoury and using a variety of grains or starchy vegetables), the term most commonly refers to oat porridge (called oatmeal in the U.S. and parts of Canada), which is eaten for breakfast either plain with a bit of salt (the classic traditional Scottish version), or with other sweeteners and milk, cream, or butter.
Varieties of oat porridge include:
Groats, a porridge made from unprocessed oats or wheat
Gruel, very thin porridge, often drunk rather than eaten
This tartan, designed by Carol A.L. Martin, marries the deep colours of a ceramic bowl with the soft warm colours of just-cooked porridge.
The classic fairy tale, known as "Sweet Porridge" or sometimes "The Magic Porridge Pot", is a folkloric German fairy tale recorded by the Brothers Grimm which tells of a poor girl and her mother who have nothing to eat. They meet an aged woman who gives them a magic porridge pot and special incantations to make the pot cook (and stop cooking) porridge. Things work for a while, but then ...
To hear an audio version this classic tale told charmingly by Danny Kaye, click the porridge!