Eating a plant-based diet has a bad reputation for being expensive – but in reality, its only expensive if you want it to be! This recipe is simple: make oat milk. Oat milk costs about 3$ a half gallon where I am at and its actually pretty hard to find. Its convenient to buy it at the store BUT it’s also super cheap to make it at home. A half gallon now costs me about 50 cents to make and only 30 minutes of my time.
It doesn’t have all the extra preservatives in it like the ones you buy at the grocery store – … but we’ll survive somehow *laughs*
This recipe does require a couple key equipment items: a wire mesh strainer (if you don’t have a regular one with small enough holes in it), nut milk bags, and a high speed blender. I tried making it without the nut milk bags and unfortunately, the wire mesh strainers really aren’t fine enough for the oat pulp created in the high speed blender.
Plain Oat Milk
A recipe by Crystal, President of WFAS
T = Tablespoon
Ingredients:
- 3 cups water (for blending)
- 2-3 cups water (for soaking)
- 1 cup old fashioned oats (not the instant kind)
- 1 T date syrup (or any natural plant-based sweetener like maple syrup)
- dash of salt
Instructions:
- Put old fashioned oats in a bowl and cover with water, let sit 20 minutes.
my assembly line for oat milk - Drain AND rinse the soaking water from the oats. Rinse well for about 10 seconds. I use a spoon to turn them in the mesh strainer to ensure I get all the oats rinsed. Do not over rinse though! If you overrinse, you can end up with slimy milk.
- Add the oats to your favorite high speed blender with 2 cups of water, salt, and syrup. Blend for approximately 10 seconds. Overblending will cause the milk to be more “slimy” than normal. I call this out because the blend time may be a little more or less depending on what type of blender you have.
- Using a large bowl or measuring cup (the cup is my favorite), strain the milk from the blender into the cup THROUGH the nut milk bag.
- Pour your batch of oat milk into a lidded container. As you can see in the first picture, I have a simple container with a spouted lid.
Provided the container is a sealed/screw top container, this milk will last approximately 5 days in the refrigerator.
NOTES: You can make this unsweetened without the syrup. You can also make it vanilla by simply adding a drop or 2 of vanilla to the batch.
MORE NOTES: As you can see in the 2nd picture, I make multiple batches at once. I know I drink about a half gallon in a week so I make that in one pass. I do soak the oats in separate bowls AND I measure up my water, syrup, and salt into glasses so everything goes pretty smooth once the oats are done soaking. It’s easy to prep all of this after you put the oats out to soak. And then its rinse/blend/strain over and over until all batches are done.
LAST BIT OF NOTES: Do not over-soak, over-rinse, or over-blend. All of them lead to a rather slimy consistency (still edible but you won’t want to drink it straight up!).
REALLY THE LAST NOTES NOW: This milk will separate and settle. If you keep it in an opaque container you won’t see it BUT you still have to shake it before using – shake it, shake it… shake it like a polaroid picture *laughs*
ENJOY!
Willowbrook Farms Animal Sanctuary 