Mixed Nut Milk

A few years back I was speaking with a friend in Greece whose child has a anther severe allergy to milk and casein and anything else that  would be in that family. Well she was giving her soy milk from a can which was the only thing available to her that was non-dairy.  I had read in a health magazine about almond milk and I said to her that Greece is abundant in almonds and walnuts as well as so many other types of nuts, you can make your own milk from these! So we found a recipe for almond milk to try. I fell in love with the process and the taste, but did not continue to make my own.

Recently I decided that I wanted to try this again for myself and add another milk to my repertoire. So I started purchasing almond milk sometimes. It was good in my smoothies or my pancake batter, but I really did not like it in my coffee! I only drink one coffee a day, a Greek Frappe,  and I love it iced and milky, and store bought almond milk is rather watery.

I always keep a variety of raw nuts in the house because we love them so much and they make such a healthy snack. If I can make almond milk, then surely if I mix up a variety of nuts and make an even tastier mixed nut milk!

Recipe:

1 cup mixed nuts soaked for 24 hours in 2 cups of water

2 cups of water for blending.

2 menjool dates (for sweetness) (optional)

 

Measure out a mixture of your favorite nuts that you have on hand. I used almonds, walnuts, pistachios, cashews, pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds. Soak them in two cups of water overnight. I soaked mine for 24 hours. The longer they soak, the softer they become and the creamier the milk.

When you are ready to blend, drain the nuts and put them into your blender. Blend them with 2 cups of water until super creamy. Pour the mixture into a nut bag over a colander and allow to drain into a bowl. You will have to press the nut bag to squeeze out all of the fluid and allow it to steep for a couple of hours. I use the Euro-Cuisine Greek Yogurt Maker which is a fine mesh strainer that I normally use to strain my yogurt to thicken it.

1 cup of almonds, walnuts, cashews, pistachios, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds

soaked for 24 hours

After blending, I poured into my strainer.

After two hours I came back to find most of it had strained, however I would need to gently push the rest through.

I used a silicone spatula to gently push the milk that had not strained on it’s own through the fine mesh

It yielded 2 cups of milk.

mixed nut milk!

cheers!

Here is what you can do with the leftover pulp:

• Use it in smoothies as a thickener.
• Eat with a spoon and sweeten it with a little of whatever you want, as it is still wet with a chia seed pudding consistency.
• Dehydrate it in an oven and use it a nut meal that you can add to baked goods, pancakes and even in place of flour or bread crumbs when breading fish or chicken.

You will want to make this in small batches so that you will use it in about 3 days, as it is raw so its shelf life in the refrigerator is about that long. Of course you may pasteurize it by boiling it, but I believe that it sort of defeats the purpose of homemade! It is easy to make with no fuss at all!