How to make creamy oat milk and nut milk at home.

Photo shows me holding a bottle of homemade plant milk

Making your plant milk at home is easy, uses less packaging, and in many cases works out much cheaper as well (definitely the oat milk). What are you waiting for?

OAT MILK:

1 cup oats

4 cups water

2 dates ( or alternative sweetener such as maple syrup or vanilla essence). This is optional.

4-5tsp oil ( I used rapeseed)

Pinch salt ( optional)

1/4 to 1/2 tsp xanthan gum

Blender

2 sieves

METHOD

1.Soak the oats and the dates ( if using) in the 4 cups of water for 20 mins.

2. Add other ingredients apart from the xanthan gum. No need to drain or rinse the oats first .

3. Blend

4. Set one sieve above the other over a bowl and pour the mix through. TIP: Don’t press it through or use a nut milk bag as this can make the milk turn out slimy – and it is really hard to get through a nut milk bag. Just tilt the sieve to get the milk through.

5. Return the milk to the blender, add the xanthan gum and blend again. The xanthan gum helps the mix stay together but it does give a thicker texture so you will need to adjust to taste. It’s best to start with a smaller amount and then add a bit more to see how you prefer it.

6. Pour into your preferred container and refrigerate. Although the xanthan gum helps stop separation you may want to still give the bottle a gentle shake before using.

NUT MILK

Nut milk is even simpler.

1 cup nuts ( I usually use a mix of almonds and hazelnuts but you can also use other nuts or seeds such as pumpkin seeds)

4-5 cups water

Blender

Nut milk bag

METHOD

1. Soak the nuts in enough hot water to cover (from the kettle) for an hour (or more).
2. Drain and rinse
3. Add fresh water
4. Blend
5. Strain through a nut milk bag, muslin or other fine weave cloth. This time you can squeeze to get as much liquid as you can out.
6. Pour into your preferred container and refrigerate.

OAT AND NUT MILK

My plant milk of choice at the moment is a mix of oat and nut milk. Because the oat milk is best filtered through a sieve and the nut milk though a nut milk bag I find it easiest to make a half batch of each and then mix them together in a bottle at the end. In this case, because of the fat from the nuts there is no need to add the oil or the xanthan gum, although a tiny bit of xanthan gum at the end does reduce the settling of the oats. I keep it super simple and just blend oats with water after the 20 mins soaking time, then sieve. I don’t find the dates or other additions to be necessary. Then I make the nut milk exactly as above and mix the 2 together.

Because the sieve allows small particles of the oats through you will need to shake it before use as the small bits settle to the bottom. If there is a lot of sediment when I’m nearing the bottom of the bottle I often add more water and give it a good shake again to make it last a bit longer.

WHAT TO DO WITH THE OAT AND NUT PULP

After making these you will be left with a small amount of oat pulp and rather more nut pulp. Don’t throw this away as it can be used up in many recipes – I often share how I use it over in my instagram account. Some of my favourites are in homemade granola, in bread, cookies and cake. Treading my own Path blog has a great recipe for vegan chocolate brownies using nut pulp. The oat pulp can easily be added to porridge. You can add some nut pulp in place of tahini and I have tried fermenting it to make vegan cheese before.

Do let me know how you get on if you give this a try – and if you have other ideas for using the nut/oat pulp.

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How to make hemp milk that doesn’t split

This of you that have been following me on instagram will already know that I have been experimenting with different plant milks to find vegan substitutes for some of my milk consumption.

The most successful, and the most like regular milk so far was cashew milk but as I also just heard about the process of harvesting cashews, in which the pickers often suffer acid burns, this was never going to be a sustainable replacement for locally produced cows milk for me.

My favourite more sustainable, and more locally grown candidates have therefore been oat milk ( oats also readily available in card or paper and quite cheap) and hemp (so far I have bought this in plastic from local health food store but it grows in the UK and there are other suppliers online). Both of these are amazingly easy to make. Unfortunately both were very strange in hot drinks, sinking straight to the bottom of the cup. However I liked the taste of hemp milk in tea, after a few cups of getting used to the more nutty flavour.

Then came a game changing solution from someone in the Journey to Zero Waste UK Facebook group. I have been experimenting since and now have a homemade hemp milk I am happy to use in tea on a semi regular basis.

All you need is:

• 1/2 a cup of hemp seeds
• 6 cups water
• 1 or 2 dates (or alternative sweetener such as maple syrup)
• 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon xanthan gum ( you can find this in the baking section of supermarkets or health food stores)
• A blender
• A sieve / muslin cloth/ jelly bag

Method:

• Pop the hemp seeds, date, and water into the blender.

• Blend for several minutes until it looks milk like.

• Strain through a sieve. If you prefer to remove all the black specks of hemp seed you will need to pass it through something finer such as a muslin cloth or jelly bag – I usually just use a sieve but see from the photos I took earlier that I used a jelly bag the first time.
• Put back into the blender and add the xantham gum, then blend  again immediately.  My  original version of this recipe suggested using 1 level tsp but based on comments I have updated the post to suggest starting with a smaller amount  as it may be that different brands of xanthan vary – try 1/4 tsp to begin with and increase to taste.

• Decant into a bottle or jar and store in the fridge ready for use.

• Don’t forget to scrape the sieved out hemp seeds out of the sieve/jelly bag and store those for another use – I have so far used them in cereal bars, granola or added to the next loaf of bread/pizza.

No it’s not frogspawn – it’s hemp pulp

And that’s it – it should keep for 3-5 days in the fridge. Do let me know if you make it and how you get on. And I would love to hear any other plant milk making tips.

Update to add that it also tastes good with 1tbsp of chia seeds added at the beginning – you can leave those to soak for a bit first as they absorb liquid and swell up.

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