Have you milked any oats lately?

The past few months I have been experimenting a lot with making my own non-dairy milks.They are so much cheaper than store bought brands, do not contain any of those nasty preservatives, and also eliminate all of the non-recyclable packaging that many of the non-dairy milks come in.

Attempt 1 -  rice milk. dislike.
Attempt 2 - oat milk. okay-ish.. but when heated turns gooey like oatmeal.
Attempt 3 - oat/almond milk. Mmmmm! Love this and only wish almonds were cheaper so that I could solely use almonds. We use this a lot as a substitute for dairy milk in cooking and baking.
Attempt 4 - walnut/oat milk.  Excellent, especially for hot cocoa.

And finally... (but not really finally)


PEANUT MILK

Peanut Milk

As you can imagine, there isn’t much information out there on peanut milk but I did manage to stumble across a few recipes. Verdict: SUCCESS!  I would not necessarily use this as a substitute for milk in recipes like I do with my oat/almond milk, but it is quite the treat for a winter day. The cardamom and cloves really add some warmth to the “milk” making it reminiscent of chai... mmm!

Experiment:
Tonight I will be making  some brown rice with spicy peanut sauce and cilantro (sans the chicken this time). I’ll be cooking the rice in this delicious concoction instead of plain old water.... I’ll let you know how it goes. I usually add coconut milk to this recipe as well. Guess who forgot to buy coconut milk? Oh well, I don’t like the bpa in those cans anyway.

So...... 

I made some of my own with desiccated coconut. It’s delicious and creamy. Although using a fresh coconut would definitely be better, this is not a bad alternative. Hmm... I just might have to crunch the numbers (or have Jeremy do it)  to see if this can replace our every day oat-almond milk.


Here’s the recipe I came up with:

Coconut Milk

1 cup desiccated coconut (sugar free)
2 cups hot water

• Boil water, turn off burner, add coconut, stir, cover, and let stand for 15-20 minutes.
• Pour mixture in blender and blend for 1-2 minutes
• Strain through fine mess sieve into glass jar (or container of choice) and refrigerate and enjoy.

Easy.