how-to

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Almond milk is something that many people use nowadays, whether they are vegan or have dairy allergies. Sure you can buy some (non raw) almond milk at the store for your smoothies or cooking, but there’s likely going to be sugar, preservatives and other additives and synthetic stuff in it as well. While it is convenient to use pre made almond milk, it’s not a good idea to base your whole diet on processed packaged foods.

It’s very easy to make at home, and most cost effective if you enjoy using almond pulp in recipes like raw bars, cookies, crackers, or drying it out to use for almond flour. This raw almond milk is great for using in raw smoothies, raw banana ice-cream and raw dressings.

This low fat almond milk is also a nice pretty white colour and not browny tinged from additives like processed almond milk! Beautiful.

How To Make Your Own Homemade Raw Vegan Almond Milk

Ingredients:

1 cup of whole raw shelled almonds
Enough water to cover almonds if soaking overnight
4 cups filtered water (for making milk) If you want it even thinner use 5 cups of water.

Required tools:

Container to soak almonds
Metal mesh strainer/nut milk bag
Vitamix, Blendtec or other blender

Directions:

1. Soak almonds in a bowl or container with enough water to cover and let sit overnight, around 8 hours. (You can skip this step if you have a Vitamix or Blendtec)

2. Drain and rinse the almonds. Place into Vitamix or other blender with 4 cups of filtered water. Blend for about 45 sec to a minute on high. Just until all the almonds are in tiny pieces and it’s frothy.

3a. If using a nut milk bag hold the bag open over a large bowl and gently pour the blended almond milk into the middle of the open bag. Be careful not to spill pulp over the sides. Pour a little at a time and put the blender container down and close the bag at the top and squeeze the bag into the bowl to separate the almond pulp from the almond milk. You can either save the squeezed almond pulp to dry into almond flour or use to make cookies or nut balls or compost it. Continue this process until you have separate all the milk from the almond pulp. If you can’t stand and squeeze you can hang the bag filled with pulp and almond milk up above the bowl and let it drain for a while or in between breaks. Using a good quality nut milk bag you should only have to strain the milk one time if you didn’t spill any pulp over the edge.

3b. If using metal mesh strainers: get out 3 medium bowls or containers. Hold your small metal mesh strainer over one of the bowls and pour the almond mixture slowly into it. Fill up the strainer and then use a spoon to push the liquid down from the pulp. Place the extra pulp in one of the bowls if you want to save it for later. This will take a while. If using a metal strainer, keep filling it up with almond mixture and filtering the pulp from the milk with your spoon and set the pulp aside. Rinsing your strainer in between each filter will make it easier to strain and get rid of the little pieces stuck to it.  After you have filtered your almond milk once, you may want to filter the whole thing a few more times for a smooth milk. Place your filter over the last clean bowl and pour your filtered almond milk over it. You should see some froth and a little pulp being filtered out the second time. Rinse your other bowl and strainer and filter back and forth until your almond milk is smooth to your liking. I do this 6-8 times with a metal strainer for the smoothest milk.

5. Once you’re done you can store the almond milk in the fridge. Depending what you want to do with it you can leave it plain, or blend in a date and some vanilla for sweet almond milk.

I leave mine plain so I can use it for things like banana ice-cream, chia “tapioca” pudding, smoothie base, dressing base etc. I just add pitted dates or vanilla extract  or fresh vanilla bean to the recipe if I need a sweet milk.

Best used within 3 days. Store in a tightly sealed container in the refrigerator.

Have you ever made your own plant based milk at home? What’s your favourite?