Whenever we’re shopping at Fethiye market or at the Sunday market in Çalış, we’re usually shopping for good, fresh produce – whatever appeals to us on the day – as well as the staples like potatoes and onions.
Other times, we’ll top up our dairy goods and olive selection. And then, once every so often, we move away from the fresh fruit and vegetable section to replenish our dried fruits and nuts tub.
Why? So that we can do our homemade muesli recipe. That’s why.
Turkey is famous for its varieties of nuts and dried fruits – so they’re just another ingredient that we like to indulge in and make the most of, living here.
We like to think this a very simple muesli recipe – well, why complicate matters – and we could just buy a box of the stuff from the supermarket, couldn’t we?
Quick and easy. But that just seems such a shame when there are so many goodies at the market to choose from.
Choosing our own dried fruits and nuts for our homemade muesli means we’re in control of what’s going in there.
Of course, when you go to any of these stalls at the markets of Turkey, the trick is not to get too excited, pointing at just about anything that catches your eye (it’s difficult not to buy all sorts of tempting treats).
Not only will you end up with too many ingredients, you’ll also find the liras racking up, and, before you know it, you’ve spent a small fortune on luxury nuts and dried fruits; a lot of which you don’t need.
A Healthy Homemade Muesli Recipe
Over our years of living in Fethiye, we’ve made our own muesli and experimented with different types of, and different amounts of, fruits and nuts.
Give or take a few changes here and there, we usually stick to the same muesli recipe now. So, what do we buy when we go to the pazar for our ingredients?
Mmm, all of this: Walnuts, honey and sesame seed coated peanuts, plain almonds, sun dried apricots (not the factory-produced bright orange ones, but apricots that have actually seen sunshine during their drying process), raisins and dried cranberries.
Then we buy two 500g boxes of rolled oats. In Turkey, these are called yulaf ezmesi.
By the time you’ve bought all this, it’s roughly the same price as buying a couple of boxes of branded muesli…but you don’t get to choose what goes into your branded muesli – and you’ll get more portions out it too.
Smash your walnuts up a little and then just mix everything together and give it all a good shake in a big tub. That’s it!
Basic muesli…but oh sooo good! Here’s the full list of ingredients…
Our Simple Muesli Recipe
Homemade Muesli Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 kg rolled oats
- 100 g walnuts broken into smaller pieces
- 100 g almonds unsalted
- 100 g honey & sesame seed coated peanuts
- 100 g sundried apricots cut into small pieces
- 50 g sultanas
- 50 g dried cranberries
- milk & fresh fruit for each serving
Instructions
- After chopping your apricots and breaking your walnuts into smaller pieces, take all of your ingredients (except the milk and fresh fruit) and mix them together.
- Store in a sealed container until you are ready to serve.
- To serve, add around 4 dessert spoonfuls of muesli mixture to the bowl.
- Pour over enough milk to cover your muesli and then add 1/2 chopped apple.
Notes
- Your homemade muesli recipe should make about 18 servings.
- As with all of our recipes, the number of calories per serving is approximate, depending on the size of your serving and the nuts and fruits you choose.
- The fresh fruit and milk is not part of this calorie count.
- If you like your oats in your muesli to be soft, pour over your milk about 30 mins to 1 hour before serving.
- We like to serve our homemade muesli with a firm fresh fruit, such as a chopped sweet apple, mixed in just before eating.
Serving Up Your Homemade Muesli Creation
Now, we did mention that this recipe for homemade muesli doesn’t work out super cheap – the nuts and fruit are just short of 20 TL – but we get around 16-18 servings from our little bounty (4 heaped dessert spoonfuls in a bowl).
And, because we mix fresh fruit in, too, before we serve it, it’s super filling.
This muesli is a brunch which we eat regularly after we’ve been out for a run.
And we’ve got Jamie Oliver to thank for this little tip that we’re going to share with you now – this is one for those of you who, like us, likes softened oats.
Decide in advance that you are having muesli for brunch, put it in a bowl and then add just enough milk to cover your mixture.
Now stick it in the fridge and forget about it for an hour or so.
After an hour, as you can see in the photo above, your oats will have absorbed much of the milk and softened.
At this point, we use one apple between the two of us, just cored and chopped up roughly (or grated if you like).
Put your fresh apple into the bowl and mix everything up.
Now you can add more milk – whatever suits your taste. You can see in the photo that your milk goes a slightly creamy colour from the oats.
Eat it all up and you should have enough fuel inside your belly to keep you going until evening meal time. Yummy!
For an even more super filling muesli, we’ve sometimes substituted the fresh apple for chopped banana and we’ve also mixed a bit of süzme yoghurt into our milk on occasion, too.
Guess it depends how far we’ve run and how hungry we are that determines these little additions. When it’s strawberry season in Fethiye, they work well, too.
And that’s it. A healthy homemade muesli recipe that’s quick and simple and it really sorts you out for the day ahead. Afiyet olsun!
Although we’ve used locally bought, Turkish ingredients for our muesli recipe, muesli isn’t traditionally Turkish so you can find this, and many other non-Turkish dishes in our International Recipes category.