Making your own nut milks at home can be an empowering step toward health and well-being for you and your family.
Commercial nut milks and dairy-free alternatives can be overpriced and are often full of additives. For those of us that need to avoid common gut irritants, like guar gum and carrageenan, using store-bought nut milks is not an option.
Plus, it’s easy and fun! All you need is a blender and some cheesecloth or a nut milk bag to create healthy, dairy-free milk alternatives.
Almond Milk
Prep Time: 5 minutes
Yield: 1 quart
Ingredients:
1 cup raw almonds
8 cups filtered water, divided
1/4 teaspoon sea salt, divided
1 small date, pitted
Method:
- Place almonds in a bowl with 4 cups of filtered water and 1/8 teaspoon of the salt and soak for 10 hours or overnight.
- Drain the nuts and rinse well. transfer them to a blender and fill with 4 cups filtered water. Add the date and the remaining 1/8 teaspoon salt and blend until smooth.
- Strain the milk through a fine-mesh sieve, a nut milk bag, or doubled cheesecloth. Squeeze to remove all of the liquid. Store in the refrigerator for 5 days.
A few tips
- I use a Vitamix Pro 7500, but any blender will do.
- Cheesecloth can work great, but I use a nut milk bag. You can order the bag I use on Amazon.
- You can also make cashew, hazelnut or brazil nut milk. Soak cashews for 4 hours. Hazelnuts and brazil nuts don’t need to be soaked, because they don’t contain the enzyme inhibitors that prevent nuts from being digested properly- so you can make milk from those nuts at the drop of a hat.
- Many of us are concerned about the water shortage in California, and thus want to limit our purchase of Almonds. If so, cashews are a fabulous alternative. My husband prefers cashew milk and I tend to make it more often as the nuts are soaked for less time and less pulp is produced.
- There are many uses for the leftover almond pulp, so be sure to save it and look for recipes online!