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When I mentioned that I was working on a homemade milk post many of you asked for a low-cost and nut-free homemade milk recipe. I decided to put myself to the challenge. Homemade Oat Milk, it is!
First, I’ll show you how I made it with step-by-step photos and at the end of my post I’ll share my thoughts on flavour, price, texture, and overall pros and cons.
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You will also need a blender (any blender should work as we don’t need to blend the oats super smooth), a fine sieve, a large bowl, a small bowl, and measuring spoons/cup. I haven’t tried this oat milk with cheesecloth or a nut milk bag yet, but if anyone does please leave a comment and let us know how it goes.
Homemade Oat Milk
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Yield
3 cups
Prep time
Cook time
0 minutes
Total time
Ingredients
- 1 cup steel-cut oats
- 3 cups filtered water
- 1.5-2 tbsp pure maple syrup (or other liquid sweetener or pitted dates), to taste
- 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
- scant 1/4 tsp fine grain sea salt (enhances flavour)
- 1/4 tsp ground cinnamon (optional, but nice)
Directions
- Rinse and drain 1 cup of steel-cut oats. [I’ve heard you can also use oat groats.} Place oats into a bowl and cover with water. Soak for around 20 minutes. You can soak longer (even overnight) if desired.
- After soaking, rinse and drain the oats very well. This step is very important because you want to rinse off any of the oat slime that has occurred from soaking. Yes, oat slime is a thing...it happens.
- Scoop oats into your blender and add 3 cups water. I prefer using 3 cups of water as opposed to 4 cups because it yields a creamier/thicker milk. Feel free to add more water if you wish, just know the more water you add the thinner your milk will be.
- Cover with lid and turn the blender on a low speed, increasing the speed gradually, and blend at the highest speed for about 8-10 seconds only. You don’t need to completely pulverize the oats.
- Place a fine sieve over a large bowl and pour the oat milk very slowly into the sieve. You might have to do this in a couple batches depending on the size of your sieve.
- With a spoon, gently push down on the oat pulp so the milk flows through. This helps push the milk into the bowl, leaving the oat pulp behind in the sieve.
- Scoop the oat pulp into a small bowl and set aside. Clean out your blender and sieve with a good rinse of water until no pulp residue remains.
- Place sieve over top of your blender and pour the milk in once again and strain.
- Rinse out the bowl and sieve once again. Strain the milk through the sieve into the bowl (optional). If you don’t want to strain again, simply add in your mix-ins and blend on low.
- I whisked in 1.5 tbsp maple syrup, 1 tsp vanilla, 1/4 tsp fine grain sea salt (enhances sweetness), and 1/4 tsp cinnamon. These mix-ins turn your oat milk from bland to hmm-this-could-be-decent-when-cold.
- I strained my milk one last time into a clean blender. Then I poured the milk from the blender into a clean mason jar for storage in the fridge.
Tip:
Notes: This should last in the fridge in a sealed container/jar for 4-5 days. Use it in smoothies, oatmeal, cereal, baking, or drink it straight. If you want to use it in a savoury recipe, you can omit the sweetener, vanilla, and cinnamon. Homemade milk does separate (remember there are no added emulsifiers!), so be sure to give your milk a very good shake (or stir) before using. No biggie. A little non-dairy milkshake never hurt anyone. I just don’t want you to be alarmed when you see the heavier ingredients sitting at the bottom of the jar.
This should last in the fridge in a sealed container/jar for 4-5 days. Use it in smoothies, oatmeal, cereal, baking, or drink it straight. If you want to use it in a savoury recipe, you can omit the sweetener, vanilla, and cinnamon.
Don’t let all the step-by-step photos fool you into thinking this is lengthy to make – it takes just 5 minutes once your oats are soaked.
Step 4:
Step 5:
Step 6:
Step 8:
As you can see in the bottom left photo, straining twice gets even more pulp out yielding a smoother milk. I usually strain it 3 times or so, but it’s not necessary if you are time-crunched.
Step 9:
Step 10:
Step 11: I strained my milk one last time into a clean blender. Then I poured the milk from the blender into a clean mason jar for storage in the fridge.
Taste Report:
The flavour of this oat milk is much like I expected; it tastes like oats. Shocking, I know. The biggest challenge I had when testing this recipe was getting it creamy enough. I tried 1/2 cups steel-cut oats with 4 cups water and then 3/4 cups steel-cut oats with 3 cups water. I found both end results to be too watery. Using 1 cup of steel-cut oats to 3 cups of water was my favourite ratio (so far). If you play around with the recipe, I’d love to hear your versions too.
Keeping in mind that this homemade milk is free of emulsifiers and thickeners, I was fairly impressed with the texture. Is it just like store-bought milk? Of course not, but I do think it’s a decent option with a clean ingredient list. It’s much easier on the wallet too!
PROS:
- Very low cost (a batch using steel-cut oats cost me about 50 cents – or less if you can get a deal on oats)
- Nut-free so good for those with allergies
- Quick to make
- You don’t need a nut milk bag or cheesecloth
- Clean up was easy, even with all the spilling I seem to do…
- Decent, but not mind-blowing, flavour
CONS:
- Not as creamy compared to homemade almond milk
- Slightly watery (although this is improved when using 3 cups water instead of 4)
All in all, I feel that the pros outweigh the cons with this homemade oat milk. It’s so cheap to make and that is a huge plus for me. I personally don’t drink much milk by the glass so I think this will be just fine when added to cereal, smoothies, oatmeal, etc. But so far, I’ve been sipping the jar straight from the fridge, letting out satisfied mmm’s and dribbling milk down the front of my shirt. Eric, as always, is quite confident he married a weirdo.
Update: I tried the milk with some Nature’s Path cereal and it tasted a bit like cinnamon toast crunch, probably thanks to the cinnamon in the milk. yummy!
I also made a trial using cooked steel-cut oats and the milk turned out super slimy. I didn’t rinse the oats after cooking, but maybe I should have? I’m going to stick with the non-cooked method.
Odds are that some of you won’t like this milk at all, but it’s also likely that some of you will really enjoy it and appreciate this as a cheap, at-home alternative to the store-bought stuff. I’m quite anxious to see what you think and I welcome your feedback in the comments!
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What can you do with the leftover oat pulp? I suggest saving it and mixing it into oatmeal and smoothies. If you have a dehydrator, I assume you could also dehydrate the pulp and then pulverize it in a blender to make flour. If anyone has any other ideas, leave ‘em below.
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Have you ever made homemade oat milk or tried a store-bought version? Do you make your own milks at home? If so, what’s your favourite recipe?
Catching up in this series? See: Vegan How To: Introduction (Why this series?), Part 1: How To Make The Transition, Part 2: Replacing Dairy
Made this milk this morning after soaking oats overnight. Came out really nice! Anxious to test it when I get home tonight. I’ve been making homemade cashew milk for almost a decade, this is my second attempt at making a different kind of plant based milk (horrible slimy results from homemade rice milk). Thanks for a great post & tutorial!
My homemade cashew milk: http://sudsymaggie.wordpress.com/2012/08/19/cashew-milk/
I am wondering if this can be made in large quantities and then canned?
Use the left over pulp in a recipe for doggie cookies?
Question: could you put this in coffee or would it be weird? Trying to find an unprocessed alternative to non-dairy milk from the store :)
I dont think it would be creamy enough for coffee?
We use Pacific brand Oat Milk in our Lattes and Coffee drinks. It is thicker (and slightly sweeter) than this recipe so I’m looking to find one that will remedy that. However, we LOVE it in coffee. It even produces a really nice froth :-)
This is really good! I love homemade almond milk but it’s a bit of a process to soak almonds overnight, peel, then blend into milk. I soaked the oats for about an hour and did use a nut milk bag as the strainer. Delicious! The ratios for maple, vanilla, salt, and cinnamon were perfect. Thanks for a great recipe!
Could you tell me approximately how many calories are in oat milk. I made some…delicious. I also made porridge with the left over pulp…again….how caloric would the porrige be. What is taken from the oats during the process. Tx
What a great recipe! Just wanted you to know that I tried it out tonight and LOVE it. I’ve been drinking almond and soy milk for years now, but it’s just so expensive. This is definitely one that’s EASY on the wallet and tastes pretty good too. I’m able to get steel cut oats for 60 cents a lb in the bulk section of our grocery store, so this is definitely economical for me. THANK YOU!!
This hasn’t been mentioned yet: use the left over pulp as bulgur (cook it and use in salads etc). It’s also fine in breads and vegan patties… And as a porridge, of course.
If the amount is too little, you can freeze it and wait until you have enough for a meal – I guess you can make milk a couple of times a week, but you don’t want to eat the left over all the time.
Tip: if you want to use your oat milk in a desert, you can soak the oats in a juice or with a lots of dried fruits/berries. Just don’t change the liquid after the soaking. (The slimy something is just starch, isn’t it? I use oats groats and don’t get this kind of a problem. You should soak groats longer than for 20 mins, though. I prefer 6 hours or over a work day or night.)
If you are in a hurry, you can use heated rolled oats. That kind of milk will have some starch on it, but it’s not a problem if you use the milk in soups, pancakes etc. But it’s not the ideal for coffee.
Someone was wondering about the pros of fortified milks. Well, it’s the same kind of calcium, B-vitamin and D-vitamin they add into the liquid in the milk factory that you can buy yourself from your local drug store. Just remember to take your tablets :) This choice is much more ecological, of course: just think how many miles they transport the milks (mostly water)…
NB. I come from Finland, so don’t know if you get hemp seeds there? If you make milk out of them, the nutty milk will thicken the foods as eggs do. Hemp contains similar kind of protein, albumin. So hemp milk is ideal for pancakes, casserols, pies… And if you boil the milk, you can make tofu kind of cheese. It’s just a lot of easier to make! Just remember to use a cloth to press the milk so that the colour stays white and there will be no grey small pieces of seeds. (Food hemp has nothing to do with cannabis; they grow for example in Canada).
For the coffee I recommend nut-milks. I’ve triend hemp milk only, it works fine, but home-made almond milk should do as well. It can happen that the milk curdles a little because of the hot drink – if you think it doesn’t look good, try to add the milk at first and coffee after that.
I am so excIted. I am making this today for the first time, and will follow your almond recipe next. My son and I are dairy free and we alternate between many non-dairy milks. A request….could you do one for hemp milk too? Pleassse? :)
Thank you for everything you do!
Great trick!!
How long does it last in the refrigerator?
Thank you
Keeping the steel cut oats is definitely a good way to go with milk, I think. Cooking kinda messes with the texture and a lot of the nutrients. I love oat or rice milk warmed with fresh grated nutmeg, cinnamon and a bit of maple syrup! Its like 10,000 times better than when I had it with dairy milk :D I’ll have to give this recipe a try for sure though, since I’ve only made homemade almond milk.
OAT MILK! You’re a genius!!!
Hi you can use the left over Pulp to make oatmeal bread…Or use it in a muffin or cake recipie…Hope this can give you a few good ideas…;-)
Can you use rolled oats? IM in the UK and cant find Steel cut!
Thanks
<3
OMG< I just made this! I didn't sift as I was making a smoothie anyway (I threw in a banana and a scoop of plant protein powder) – delicious! I love that I had all the ingredients in the pantry! Yay! And oh is it a budget-friendly recipe! I can't believe a carton of oatmeal milk goes for three bucks at my local store
I made your oatmeal milk with a Vitamix and oatmeal that cooked in 5 minutes (it was on hand, not the best) and I had absolutely no pulp with an all night soak. Next I will try the good Irish steel cut oats. A banana would make a nice addition. I hope it holds up with coffee and tea. My soy sometimes curdles! Tx for this. I don’t want to eat a lot of nuts and soy because, although they are healthy, they are high in fat. I am loosing weight now and need to keep it going. I say I do eat nuts, but more for medicinal purposes! Like a tablespoon a day!
thanks again. I wouldn’t have thought of this way to make milk. I will work my way through Bobs Mill varieties too.
Dawn Willoughby
Okay. I cheated. Since I didn’t have any steel cut oats I used quick oats. My initial batch was just on the palatable side of consumption, so I played with the added ingredients a bit. I used agave nectar instead of maple syrup and ended up using about three table spoons and another heaping tea spoon of raw honey. Either the extra nectar or the honey did the trick. :-)
What I learned:
*Soak the oats for longer than I think is needed.
*There is no such thing as straining the liquid too many times.
*It’s okay to experiment a little.
*I will use steel cut oats for my next batch.
Thank you for sharing this recipe. I had fun making Oat Milk, and I’ll post again after I make a batch using your recommended ingredients.
professor russ
THIS IS AMAZING!!!!!!! I did it with rolled oats and rinsed really good after soaking them. It tates delish ( though I dont know for sure what is should taste like..this is my first time) nice and creamy ( to me) added the maple syrup ( lots of it for me) and the other stuff… though I still have to continue drinking soy milk ( my mum wants me to) I know this will be a go to recipe :) thank you so much for creating all these awsome healthy recipes :)
I really want to try this at home, but I’m not sure if I can – I have a Nutri Bullet, which only has one blend speed and tends to completely pulverize/mash/blend in things. Could I still make it, do you think?
I’m sure it will be fine? Might just take a bit longer to strain.
how would you calculate calories on this, since the oat pulp is removed?