Four Happy Tummies: Almond Milk

A couple of weeks ago I made cashew milk and it was so good. I like the flavor of nut milks but I don’t agree with some of the *extra* ingredients in the store bought cartons. I looked up some recipes online and they are anything but (a recipe that is). All you need is nuts and water (and sweetener if you like). Since the cashew milk was so good I thought I’d try some almond milk this weekend.

I bought a 12 ounce bag of organic raw almonds (I get these at TJs or Whole Foods) and soaked them overnight. From what I read online, you only need to soak them 4-5 hours but I ended up leaving them overnight. After they were done soaking, I strained the water and threw them in the blender. I turned my blender on and then poured water in while they were grinding up. Eventually the entire blender was full and I let it run until the almonds were good and “pureed”. You can drink (or chew) this mixture as is but it’s really gritty. It tastes good and the consistency is almost like a milkshake but it’s full of little nut pieces; it’s kind of strange in your mouth.

To make “milk” you need to strain the mixture. You can run it threw a strainer but you’ll end up with nut remnants in the milk. The best thing to do is run the mixture through cheese cloth, through the strainer (instructions I found online). Because it is so thick, it takes a really long time to strain through and you have to pour more mixture into the strainer, working in batches. I basically just let this sit on the counter and take its time while I did other things in the kitchen. Once I had poured everything out of the blender, I added more water to the nut mixture to “steep” through and get a little more milk out of it.

Once everything has dripped through, pick up the cheesecloth and gather it at the top so you can wring out the remains. You can squeeze a lot of liquid out of what’s left in the cheese cloth. Toss the cheese cloth filled with ground almonds or set it aside to roast and make homemade almond meal.

I completely eyeballed the amount of water but I ended up with the exact amount a small jar of juice. I added a little cinnamon to the milk (bc I love it and it just sounded good). From what I read online, you can sweeten the milk with honey, agave, maple syrup or your sweetener of choice but I for one don’t like sweet milk and I think it tastes great in its own.

Note: This is the exact same process I followed for the cashew milk.