The Quick Trick For Creating Clusters In Store-Bought Granola

Are you team cereal or team granola? It may seem like a fine line between the two, but granola offers a more extreme adventure in texture, bringing superior crunch to bowls of milk or yogurt. Part of granola's textural charm lies in its crispy ingredients (toasted oats, nuts, and other dried grains) and its ability to stick together in chunky little clusters (through the power of sweet, sticky syrups). There are a few specific tricks that a home cook can use to get extra crispy granola or extra clumpy granola. But these tricks normally apply to homemade granola. So what about updating your store-bought granola? 

Take the common problem one runs into with store-bought granola: Whether through rough handling or careless packaging, these bags of granola may not have the jumbo clumps an enthusiast might be craving. And with all the homemade granola hacks out there, you'd think we would have developed a way to rescue our piecemeal granola. Well, don't despair. A new hack has arrived to help you re-cluster your granola.

First, check to make sure that your granola is coated in a sticky residue, which is evidence that the oats have been stuck together with some kind of syrup or honey. Most commercial granola is made with syrup so this shouldn't be a problem. Next, you'll place your granola in a microwave-safe bowl and heat it on high for 30-second intervals in the microwave. 

After a few rounds, the liquid gluing your granola together should melt and become sticky again. Once you let it rest, it'll cool down and turn the small granola clumps into one mega granola cluster. At this point, you can gently break up this uni-clump into the individual large clumps you were hoping for.

At the conclusion of your microwave experiment, you'll be rewarded with the bigger-and-better granola clusters that all texture-fanatics strive for. Just try not to go overboard with the microwaving, as the granola can burn in the microwave if you zap it for too long.