How to Make Homemade Granola

Homemade Granola

2 cups rolled oats
1 cup shredded coconut
1 cup slivered almonds
½ cup pistachios or any kind of nut
¼ cup honey
1/3 vegetable oil
¾ cup dried apricots, sliced
½ cup dried cherries
½ cup dried cranberries
½ cup any other dried fruit

Female 1: Okay, now we’re going to make some homemade granola, very
easy, not as hard as you may think. All you need is some rolled
oats. You don’t want the quick cooking oats. They don’t cook the
same and you don’t get the same texture from the quick oats as you
do from the rolled oats. So you definitely want to stick with those.

Female 2: How much, quantity wise?

Female 1: Two cups. And then, here we have 1 cup of slivered almonds,
untoasted. We have 1 cup of small shredded coconuts and that’s
the angel flake. It doesn’t matter if it’s sweetened or unsweetened.
That’s your own preference. And we have half a cup of pistachios.
You can use any kind of nut you want. You can use cashews or
you can use pecans or walnuts or anything you want, anything that
you prefer. But you generally want them toasted. Toasted nuts,
they just add a different and better flavor. It’s just more depth.

So all you do is mix that together. So we’re going to take one of
our small bowls that we’ve already used, no need to dirty an extra
dish. Grab a small whisk, small quantities. You don’t need large
equipment. This is vegetable oil, it’s 1/3 cup. I got ¼ cup of honey.
We just whisk it together until it comes together, just like that. You
want it completely combined because you don’t want the honey to
be by itself and stick to any one ingredient. It could burn faster.

I am pouring it over our almonds and oats and our coconuts and
nuts. We’re going to mix that until it’s combined, so I have to get a
little dirty here, get our fingers in there just to make sure every bit
is covered. This is how you get it crunchy, the sugar and the oil. So
you just want to make sure everything is combined. And we will
spray a sheet pan, spray it well. Spread that out. We’re going to
pop this in the oven for 20 to 25 minutes until it’s golden brown.
About halfway through, about ten minutes, we’re going to stir it
because the stuff underneath won’t get as brown.

Okay, it’s been about ten minutes and we’re going to give our
granola a stir. You can see it’s getting golden brown on top and the
stuff underneath is a little white, so you want to make sure you
ruffle it up a little bit to get it all incorporated together again, and
then we’re going to push it out. I recommend using an oven mitten.
You don’t want to burn yourself. Then you push it back out and so
it’s even layer again. And it will cook for another ten minutes.
Perfect! There we go! Another ten minutes and we’ll have a
granola.

Okay, now we’re going to mix our dry ingredients together, our
apricots and our cherries and our cranberries. I’ve just taken these
apricots and I’ve sliced them with the scissors. You can use the
knife but I find you get a cleaner cut when you use scissors. You
can get about four slices out of them no big deal. You can cut it
however you like. You can use any dried fruit you like. You can
use raisins or you can do dried blueberries, but I’ve chosen to do
apricots and dried cherries. These are bean cherries, and dried
cranberries. Just mix those together a little and as you can see, I
love my zest, so I'm going to add a little--not a lot--very little
orange zest. And then, we’ll wait for everything to come out of the
oven, let it cool a few minutes before we add it to the dried fruit
and then we’ll put it in a bowl.

Our timer just went off, so that means our granola is done,
perfectly brown. So we’re going to set it on top of the stove over
here, just off to the side before we put it into the dried fruit
mixture. You don’t want to scorch anything or overcook anything,
so we’re just going to let it cool down over here on the stovetop.

Okay, our granola has cooled down now. It’s perfect temp, again,
it’s a little warm. The granola is a little crunchy and a little cool.
So we have our little trusty little bowl scraper here. We’re just
going to make a little bit of a mess because it’s stuck to the bottom
of the pan. The honey is so sticky and then you have sugar in the
coconut, so sometimes if you don’t spray the pan very well, it
happens.

Female 2: You couldn’t really do this on parchment paper, could you?

Female 1: You actually could do it on parchment paper and wouldn’t have a
problem. Some of it loosened up. Let’s get that off the pan so we
don’t get it all over the kitchen. We can just mix it together in the
bowl with our dried fruit. Let’s just scrape off what ended up on
the counter into the bowl, stir it together. We got all that good,
dried fruit with the coconut and the almonds, the oatmeal, sweet
and crunchy, and the dried fruit adds a little tang. We can serve it
with milk, soymilk, over yogurt, or it makes a really good snack if
you just take it to work with you in a bag, some mid-afternoon
snack. It’s perfect!