I have oatmeal with dried fruit almost every day. The less processed the oats the better. I like steel cut or rolled oats with boiling water poured on it. Cooking for a long time makes it gloopy. Just need to rehydrate the oats.

I tend not to eat breakfast, but working from home, making nice oatmeal for lunch is easy and very filling -- I never need to snack before end of work and dinner. I'm sure for most people who do like to eat breakfast, it would work great as a breakfast. Everything is available at Costco in shelf/freezer-stable bulk quantities for quite cheap and at good quality, and it takes 5 minutes to make, which primarily consists of opening and closing bags, and cleaning the pot at the end -- the "cooking" is entirely passive:

- 1/4 cup sprouted oats

- bit less than a handful of frozen mango, frozen strawberries, 1 banana

- small amount of goji berries

- 1 tbsp ground flax

- 1/3 tbsp cinnamon

- 1 cup water

Stir to mix and then pressure cook in instant pot for 10 minutes. Prepare large eating bowl with:

- 1/2 cup frozen blueberries

- 1/2 cup walnuts

Pour porridge on top and mix (the frozen berries will defrost and bring everything to almost a good eating temperature, but leaving enough time to clean the pot before it has truly cooled enough). I guessed on a few measurements since I only really measure the oats, water, and powdered ingredients and eyeball everything else. Easy to adapt for >1 person.

I'd never bother trying to find a "healthy" cereal in a box as long as I had access to basic cooking and food storage facilities.

Try savory oats. I cook mine with curry and adobe, a little olive oil, nutritional yeast, chopped garlic, topped with chili crisp and a fried egg. Usually on top of a bed of sprouts or shredded red cabbage.

I know these are all words, but its arrangement in a culinary sense is so unfamiliar I would assume this was output from the neo-markov chain-gang.

im sure its good though.

Drop in some fresh berries or other fruit. Also see the so called "overnight oats" (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7Soc8B_zX-E or one of https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yenZLqXAzng, sarcasm warning) peanut butter banana works well and there are other combinations.

Instead of cooking them soak the oats in milk overnight. That is really a game changer.

I know you're getting a bunch of suggestions but I'm going to throw in my stupid simple approach that I've loved.

First, if you don't like the texture, as others have suggested, go with steel cut oats or whole oats (I always get Quaker whole oats, cheaper than a lot of the steel cut oat brands).

I like my oats savory. I pretty much eyeball everything but I do about a little more than half a cup, add water until I can barely feel it through the top of the oats, microwave for 2 minutes. Then add a little bit of butter and salt, mix it up, and you've got yourself a breakfast.

I used to be like that. Cooking in milk instead of water made the difference for me.

I use regular rolled oats with 2 parts milk, 2 parts water and 1 part heavy cream.

Rolled oats for sure can be like that.

Have you tried steel-cut oats? They are wonderfully chewy [0]. I usually mix a little rolled oats into some steel cut.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steel-cut_oats

Try other grains besides oats. Barley, rye (flakes), spelt, triticale, buckwheat groats. I mix a few with sunflower seeds and various dried fruits into a large batch of muesli that I eat raw. But it makes a great “oatmeal” too if cooked or soaked the night previous. Plain oats is so bland.

Don't even cook them or use milk. Finely cut oats, in cold water with a small quantity of raisins: "Oats and raisins". Let it soak a little to wet and soften, but not enough to turn it into high viscosity gloop like when cooked.

I make it into granola. It really doesn't take very long and you can vary the flavor to your liking.

Or something like oat flour pancakes. You can even make a bunch ahead of time, freeze them, then reheat in a toaster in the morning.

I find puffed grains or fruit-free muesli to be much more palatable. They’re basically the same thing (though sourced from other grains.).

I can’t get over oatmeal’s texture.

You can try congee or polenta instead. Or mix in various grains.