Nut milks are easy to make and nutritious. Click here for a short video demonstration: http://vimeo.com/27027302
Ingredients:
1 cup pre-soaked, raw almonds (or your nut of choice. Now I use pecans from my trees)
4 cups purified or filtered water
1.5 teaspoons organic vanilla extract
Sweetener (to taste, added gradually): honey, agave, dates, etc. (I use 2 tablespoons for raw honey, but I like it sweet)
Equipment: blender, nut milk bag or cheesecloth for straining, wide mouthed container or bowl and a pretty glass pitcher
To do:
Add all ingredients to your blender and blend well for a minute or two, depending on the quality of your blender. Open the blender to test the flavor, add additional sweetener if needed and blend again to combine ingredients well.
Using a clean, fragrance-free nut milk bag or cheesecloth (and clean hands!) strain the milk and almond pulp into a large mouth container, bowl or pitcher. Make sure there is enough room for your hand to squeeze the milk from the cloth strainer into the container without losing any milk. Transfer your milk to a pretty glass container.
Chill and enjoy!
Soaking Almonds:
Raw Almonds, or any brown nut needs to be soaked for at least 12 hours. Brown nut skins are said to be somewhat toxic to humans and difficult to digest. The skins are there to keep the nut dormant until planted (or in this case, soaked). Soaking the almonds signals the nut to begin sprouting and the nut responds by releasing its previously dormant vitamins, minerals, proteins and essential fatty acids. This creates optimum nutrition and flavor….which is what we want. I soak my almonds for up to 48 hours (this only depends on my schedule and how quickly I drink my last batch). If you do this, make sure to change your water a couple of times to keep the almonds clean. Soak the almonds in double the amount of water as the almonds will absorb a lot of water and increase in size. The 1 cup called for is measured prior to soaking.
Almonds:
Use only raw almonds. It is difficult to find raw, unpasteurized almonds in the US but some distributors import them from Spain since they don’t pasteurize their almonds to maintain their nutritional integrity. LivingNutz.com is a good place to find these almonds, although I’m sure there are many other places they can be found.
A word about water:
Be sure to use only pure water when both soaking as well as the water used in the recipes. Almond milk tends to be delicately flavored and you don’t want to use water that has poor flavor to start. You will need double the water above your almonds as they will really soak it up.
Flavoring your almond milk:
Some people like it plain. I tend to like my almond milk lightly sweetened (I used to be addicted to chocolate milk!) so you can use many things to flavor or sweeten your almond milk including:
Vanilla Extract
Dates
Honey
Agave Nectar
Chocolate power
Or feel free to experiment, but add as you go, or you can ruin your milk with too much flavor. So I suggest going by your own tastes. In my case, I love organic, raw honey. Since it can be fairly solid I soften or lightly melt it in a bowl of hot water. (as shown) This also helps it to easily and evenly distribute throughout the milk during blending.
Almond Milk Containers: I hate plastic containers. They don’t display well, they allow stinky smells to infiltrate your delicate, hard earned nut milk and probably worse, they can seep chemicals into your food. Use a pretty glass pitcher or container to display your milk. It helps to chill, feels good to pour and looks better in your fridge.
Almond milk can keep up to 4 days in your fridge.
Separation:
Like many juices and liquids, almond milk can separate in the refrigerator, I use a clean wooden spoon to stir gently before I pour a glass.
