How to make oat milk. With only three simple ingredients – oats, water & a pinch of salt, creamy oat milk is the perfect alternative to dairy milk. Make it at home & now you have a dairy-free alternative without all the additives that are in store-bought milk alternatives. Oat milk is easy & inexpensive to make. How to make oat milk? Simple…
In my ongoing quest for better health & weight loss, I’m cutting back on the amount of animal products I consume. Wanting porridge the other morning but not wanting to add dairy or coconut milk to it, I was in a quandary, albeit small, for something to add ( I ended up having nothing, just a little maple syrup). So I added “almond milk” to the shopping list. Then when I was out grocery shopping, I grabbed a carton but before it went into my cart, I read the label. Ah, no. I put it back.
Have you ever made almond milk? Almonds & water, with a pinch of salt perhaps. The carton I held in my hand had at least a dozen ingredients listed on the ingredient label. And I get the company that makes this brand of almond milk wants some longevity from the product but what the fuck are they doing to our food that requires that many additives? It said “original” on the label. Next to it was “sweetened” so one would assume the original was unsweetened? Right? Wrong. The 4th ingredient was sugar. I could make almond milk myself but that gets expensive. So I made oat milk instead. Oats, water & a pinch of salt (which is optional).
I soaked the oats overnight in twice as much water to oats. Now, you can use rolled oats (as I did) or steel-cut oats. That’s entirely up to you. The nutritional value is negligible. The major difference – steel-cut oats are a bit lower on the glycemic index when compared to rolled oats. I had rolled oats in the pantry. Problem solved. I’ve not tried making the milk with steel-cut oats. And wouldn’t even think about using that instant flavored crap. That label is almost as long as ‘War & Peace’.
Once the oats have soaked then I blitzed them in a blender & strained them through a fine metal sieve. If you want the milk completely free of any bits, then use some muslin or a flour sack towel but give the milk a strain first. Before you blend the oat mixture, you can flavor it to sweeten it with dates & a little vanilla. This is fine if you just want it for porridge or smoothies but if you want to use it for making, say a white sauce, then you’ll want to leave it plain.
Using a tea strainer after the initial strain will also help to remove any sludge, but it’s a slower process. And I’m impatient. Mine just got one strain. Then the oat milk was funneled into some old milk bottles. One of which is 48 years old. From my days at primary school when all the kids had to drink milk each morning. Living in Australia, the milk was always warm because the milkman left it sitting on the old sandstone school fence. It was gross. The teachers would patrol to make sure we were drinking every last drop. I hated it. Turned out I had a milk allergy. That was a happy day.
The oat milk is surprisingly creamy. Thicker & nicer than rice or soy milk. Next time I’m going to try roasting the oats first to see what happens to the flavor & creaminess factor, if anything. I used to buy oat milk when I first moved to Canada. I cooked all sorts of things with it. Then one day it went away. I never considered making my own. Me, the chef. Brilliant Lovoni.
Oat milk is simple to make, inexpensive & of course, contains no animal product. This makes it good for you, the environment & importantly, the cows. Next I want to make panna cotta using oat milk. Then perhaps ice cream. Stay tuned…xo
If like me, you like to make as many things as you can from scratch, you might enjoy these recipes for making THE best roasted potatoes, cooking rice perfectly every time & making pesto correctly.
- 2 cups rolled oats
- 1 quart (1 liter) water
- pinch salt
- muslin or an old flour sack towel, to strain
- Combine all ingredients in a medium sized bowl. Cover & let stand for 8 hours or overnight.
- The next day, pour the mixture into a blender & blitz until smooth.
- Pour the mixture through a fine metal sieve. Then place some muslin or a flour sack towel over a bowl & carefully pour the oat milk into that. Gather the towel up & squeeze to extract the milk. I also take the oats from the first straining I squeeze the water from that too. Unless I’m in a hurry, then it just has one straining.
- Depending on how fine the sieve is, you might want to pour it through a tea strainer if you don’t have muslin or a clean, white flour sack towel.
- Pour into a clean jar, seal & refrigerate up to 10 days.
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