Watch how it’s made
Every step in 1:18 — from the ingredients to the finished dish.
Pumpkin spice has been so thoroughly claimed by dessert that people forget the pumpkin part. Canned pumpkin puree is a vegetable. Half a cup carries about 10 grams of carbohydrate and nearly 4 grams of fiber, which is closer to a serving of squash than to anything on a coffee shop menu. Used properly it makes oatmeal thicker, creamier and more filling for very little carbohydrate.
What you have to avoid is the tin marked pumpkin pie filling, which is pumpkin with sugar already added. The plain puree is the one you want, and the ingredient list should say pumpkin and nothing else.
Where the sweetness comes from
Almost none of it comes from sugar. Cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and clove register as sweet to most people even when no sweetener is present, which is why pumpkin spice tastes like dessert in a plain black coffee.
Add the spice early, with the liquid, rather than sprinkling it on at the end. Ground spice needs contact with moisture and a few minutes to open up; dusted over the top it tastes dusty and sits on the surface.
The chia is doing structural work
Pumpkin puree carries a lot of water. Left alone with oats it produces something loose and slightly wet. Two tablespoons of chia seeds absorb that liquid and set the bowl into something that holds its shape on a spoon.
They also bring 8 grams of fiber across the two portions. Between the chia, the oats and the pumpkin, each bowl lands at 10 grams of fiber, which is roughly a third of a day in a single breakfast.
Why there is yogurt in it
Oats and pumpkin are both carbohydrate. Without protein the bowl empties fast and leaves you hungry by ten. Three quarters of a cup of Greek yogurt stirred through brings each portion to 16 grams of protein and makes the texture properly creamy.
Stir it in off the heat. Yogurt added to a pan still on the burner can split.
Pecans, and why the fat belongs there
Two tablespoons of chopped pecans per batch is not decoration. Fat slows gastric emptying, and a breakfast of carbohydrate with no fat and no protein behaves quite differently from the same carbohydrate with both.
Toast them dry in the pan for a minute before you start. It takes almost no time and the difference in flavour is out of proportion to the effort.
Making it ahead
This works cold as well as hot. Made the night before and left in the refrigerator, the chia sets further and it becomes closer to a pumpkin pudding, which some people prefer.
It keeps three days. Beyond that the oats go soft and the spice flattens out.