I recall, as a child of perhaps eight or nine, the dread with which I faced the bitterly misnamed "spring" term in the cold slumpy days following Christmas. One of the few things that got me out of my bunk bed was the prospect of Ready Brek. "Central heating for kids" they called it. I haven't had a bowl for 15 years but I remember the milky, malty puddle and the beige-streaked spoon as vividly as I remember my teacher's implacable beehive.

Ready-Brek was one of the best things I ate as a child, and I say that without flippancy or exaggeration. It instilled in me a lifelong love of porridge, a dish that seems perfect for today as intermittent blizzards howl and the evening gloams at four.



The "instant" oats of Ready Brek are the most processed: a machine refines them so that, when you add the milk, they soften almost instantly into a smooth, lumpless bath. Oats can be milled in eight principal ways (outlined in the excellent Cook's Book of Ingredients). The most important milling for porridge is probably medium oatmeal, which takes around five minutes to cook. Others include pinhead oatmeal, useful in haggis; the American rolled oats of flapjacks and muesli; whole oats or groats which swell and plump deliciously in stews; and of course coarse oatmeal, perfect for herring-coating.

For a dish that traditionally contains three very basic ingredients, it's remarkable how much the methods for porridge-cooking deviate from one another. I allow 30-40g of porridge a person: 40 keeps me going merrily till lunch but 30 has the stomach rumbling by 11 o'clock. For rolled oats, add one cup of oats to two cups of boiling water; they take about five minutes. Using half-milk and half-water makes the dish rather more filling, and I find 100% milk a bit too rich. For pinheads, which take half an hour to cook or 15 minutes with an overnight soak, you'll need eight times as much water. Delia stirs with a balloon whisk but the correct implement is of course the spurtle, a glorified stick which allows one to scrape out every sticky morsel from the pan, and for which the annual World Porridge Making Championship is named. A former category winner of that competition has an excellent video recipe: she cooks hers in a bain-marie.

Sad to say it, but porridge isn't authentically Scottish. It's a direct descendant of pottage, the British serf's staple which, between the 9th and 15th centuries, was typically made with oats. 5,000-year-old bodies dug out of Central European bogs have had traces of oat porridge in their stomachs. But at least since Dr Johnson's time oats have been thought of as Scottish, and the Scots now market their porridge as a proud national emblem.

Different regions of the auld country historically tweaked the starchy starkness of oats, water and salt. Some would add buttermilk or whey, some let it go cold and kept it in the "porridge drawer" of a dresser before slicing it and schlepping out into the glen. And the dish developed a disproportionate share of lore and symbol: you had to stir it clockwise to ward off the devil; you referred to it in the third person plural as they or them; you ate it standing up from a wooden bowl, this last probably because the wood kept it hot for longer. You certainly never dreamed of adding sugar, a Sassenach adulteration.

As with most dishes, though, I'd rather have porridge that deviated from the "correct" method than no porridge at all. Why adhere to dogmatic tradition for the sake of some ancient cotter? A dollop of treacle, which sounds lovely, is apparently traditional in Yorkshire. Ramsay recommends honey and flaked almonds, both eminently sensible; and Levi Roots has a fine recipe for porridge with allspice, coconut milk, tropical fruits and pecans.

Britain has a sweeter tooth, especially at breakfast, than it used to. Children brought up eating Coco Pops or even cornflakes must see the morning meal differently from those reared on kippers and kedgeree. So I gladly let demerara dissolve over porridge into a sweet black slick, and stir sacrilegious spoons of jam or marmalade into the mix. Assuming this stuff isn't inedible glue to you, how do you take yours?