My Motivation
Most people will probably start off reading this wondering why I decided to try and make my own nut milk and that’s a fair question. But I love to bake and cook and am always looking to try new recipes and get creative in the kitchen. So, when my doctor told me several weeks ago that I could no longer eat dairy (due to some pesky tonsils that are getting the boot in June) I naturally looked to other alternatives. While there’s a large selection of various nut/non-dairy milks offered in my local supermarket I’ve always been bothered by the fact that the ingredient lists contain numerous things I have never heard of and can’t pronounce. So, I decided to try and make my own.
Recipe and Prep
The recipe I used is from Run Fast Eat Slow, a cookbook written by Olympic marathoner, Shalane Flanagan and chef and college distance runner, Elyse Kopecky. Their recipe is for hazelnut milk but almonds can be substituted if you’re set on making almond milk (personally I prefer the hazelnut milk). I recommend buying the hazelnuts from either Costco or nuts.com since they are much cheaper than a standard grocery store like Acme or Giant.
I will also note that the recipe calls for a high-speed blender. I do not have one. I used a food processor.
…use a blender…
It’s also worth ordering a nut milk bag off Amazon. It’s $8 and you can brag about it to all your eco-foodie-hipster friends.
The Process
Alright! Now for the fun part which is analyzing (laughing at) all the mistakes I made so that your attempt will be worthy of a Pinterest post.
I started off by putting everything in the food processor only to realize that I couldn’t get it to turn on.
No problem, I’ll just dump everything in the Kitchen Aid mixer!
So shiny, so professional, so…not a blender. As you can see, it’s not quite meeting the “creamy texture” described in the recipe.
But never fear, because I have a mini blender!
That also turns out to be too small to handle 4 cups of filtered water and 1 and a half cups of hazelnuts.
Now back to the food processor because I figured out how to put the lid on correctly! (Thanks mom). It overflowed but it’s ok because I have a great vacuum cleaner: a dog.
It took me about an hour to get all of this blended correctly so at that point I was over it. However, I kept at it and drained the contents of the food processor to separate the nut pulp from the milk. I recommend saving the nut pulp in a plastic bag in the freezer. I threw some into a batch of breakfast muffins the next day for an extra boost of protein and fiber and they were delicious!
Final Product
For the DIY queens out there, I am sure you could make this far more successfully than I did. But for those of you who are like me and could make a scrapbook (albeit an ugly one because like I said, DIY is not my thing) of all your DIY failures, this is proof that if you’re willing to put in a bit of work, you’ll be rewarded with a delicious and healthy quart of hazelnut milk (and an artsy Instagram of your efforts).
Shalane and Elyse would be proud.
HCXO,
Paige