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Overnight oats with Greek yogurt
youryum.com/recipes/overnight-oats-yogurt · serves 2

The ratio, not the recipe

Equal parts oats, milk and yogurt by volume. Everything after that is a topping, and none of it changes whether it works.

  • Vegetarian
  • High protein
By Dana Whitmore · Recipe developer
Published 12 May 2026
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A jar of overnight oats topped with berries
Photo: Phoebe Lim · CC BY-SA 2.0
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Prep
5 min
Cook
—
Total
5 min
Serves
2
Per serving
396kcal
Effort
Easy

Overnight oats fail in one of two directions. Soup, or a brick you could use as a doorstop.

The fix is a ratio rather than a recipe. Equal volumes of oats, milk and yogurt, every single time, and then everything you add on top is decoration that cannot break it. Once you have the ratio you never need to look up quantities again, which is the entire appeal of a breakfast you make at eleven at night.

Ingredients

Makes 2 servings

Equipment

  • Two jars or containers with lids

Method

  1. Stir everything except the fruit

    Oats, milk, yogurt, chia, sweetener and salt into a jar. Stir properly, right down into the corners.

    Dry pockets at the bottom stay dry all night and you will find them in the morning as a chalky layer under an otherwise good breakfast. The pinch of salt is not optional either; without it the whole jar tastes flat and slightly of nothing, in the way unsalted porridge does.

  2. Four hours minimum, overnight is better

    Lid on, into the fridge. Four hours is the minimum for the oats to hydrate all the way through.

    It keeps three days and thickens a little each one.

  3. Loosen it in the morning

    It will be thicker than it looked last night, because the chia carries on absorbing. Stir in a splash of milk to bring it back to a texture you would want to eat.

    Then the berries, on top, now. Fruit added the night before bleeds colour into the oats and goes soft and slightly fermented-tasting by morning.

What's in it

Nutrition, buying and storage notes for the ingredients this recipe leans on.

Greek yogurt 10.2 g protein

Why the ratio works

Rolled oats absorb roughly their own volume in liquid. Yogurt is thick enough to stay suspended rather than draining to the bottom, which is what happens when you use milk alone and open the jar to find a puddle sitting on a raft.

Chia is the insurance. It absorbs several times its weight and sets the whole thing into something you eat with a spoon rather than drink.

What to put on top

  • Frozen berries, added straight from the freezer in the morning. They thaw in about ten minutes and their juice is better than fresh.
  • Toasted seeds, for texture. A jar of them keeps for weeks and takes five minutes to make.
  • Grated apple and cinnamon, stirred in at the start rather than on top. This is the one fruit that survives the night.
  • Nut butter, warmed for ten seconds so it pours.

The jar matters more than you would think

A tall narrow jar keeps the fruit sitting on top where you want it. A wide shallow tub lets everything sink and mix, and by morning the berries have coloured the whole thing purple.

Anything with a screw lid.

Clip-top jars leak in a bag, and the rubber seal holds onto the smell of whatever you made last week no matter how carefully you wash it. A 400 ml jam jar with a metal lid is the right tool and it costs nothing.

Nutrition

Per serving, for 2 servings. Estimated from ingredient weights — it moves with the brands and cuts you actually use.

NutrientPer serving
Calories 396 kcal
Protein 19 g
Carbohydrate 52 g
Fibre 7 g
Fat 11 g

Source: Estimated from ingredient weights, USDA FoodData Central

Questions

Can I eat it warm?
Sixty seconds in the microwave, stirred halfway through. The yogurt sometimes looks slightly split when it is hot. It tastes the same, and it settles as it cools a little, so ignore it.
How long does it keep?
Three days in the fridge, and it gets a little firmer each day. Add the fruit each morning rather than at the start and it stays good right to the end of the third one.
Can I use flavoured yogurt?
You can. Leave out the honey if you do, because most flavoured pots already carry 10 to 14 g of sugar per 100 g and you will end up with something closer to a dessert than a breakfast.
Do I have to use chia?
No.
Does it have to be Greek yogurt?
It has to be thick. A pourable yogurt collapses the ratio and you get a jar of oaty milk with a raft of chia on top. Skyr, labneh and any strained yogurt all work identically.

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