Oat milk

Make your own oat milk

My personal favourite plant-based milk is oat milk. It has a nice creamy texture and a mild, slightly sweet flavour. Oats are also an environmentally friendly crop. It doesn't need much water and can be grown in many places, even locally and in the relatively colder Netherlands.

For years I took the easy way out and just bought oat milk in the shop. A few years ago that all prices went up by 10% or more, even for oat milk. Which was a bit odd because almost 90% of it is water. At the same time, it became impossible to buy organic oat milk with added calcium after the European Court of Justice ruled that lithothamnium couldn't be used as an additive to enrich it with calcium.

So finally I decided to make my own oat milk instead of buying non-organic oat milk or organic oat milk without calcium. It also saves a lot of waste, no more empty drinks cartons.

Ingredients

• 1 litre of cold water
• 120 grams of oats
• 4 grams lithothamnium
• 1 teaspoon of oil 

If you don't want to add extra calcium, you can leave out the lithothamnium. You can also leave out the oil if you prefer, but this will make the milk less creamy. The oil I use is Omage 3-6-9 Oil from EkoPlaza, which is a blend of beetroot oil, sunflower oil, linseed oil, evening primrose oil and tocopherol. You can use a different oil, but it is best to use an oil with a neutral taste.

Steps

• Prepare a bowl with a cloth for straining the oat milk. I use 2 cheesecloth cloths and moisten them beforehand so that they filter better.
• Put the oats and water in the blender. Often, especially in the summer when it is hot, I add a few ice cubes. I use a kitchen scale to check that I have added 1 litre.
• Blend the ingredients for 30/35 seconds on the highest setting of your blender. A high powered blender is recommended, I use a Vitamix A3500. If you think your blender is not powerful enough, you can increase the blend time. In that case you may also want to add extra ice cubes to keep the oat milk cold, as it will turn to oat porridge or it gets slimy as it heats up.
• Pour the oat milk into the bowl with the cloths
• Gently squeeze the oat milk through the cloth. If you squeeze too hard you will find that it get messy and you will get a less smooth result. Start by squeezing gently with a few fingers, like a stress ball, so that you don't put too much pressure on the cloth. When almost all the moisture is out, you can squeeze a little harder.
  Repeat for the second cloth, this is always quick and easy because 99% of the milk has been filtered through the first cloth.

If you want oat milk with as few ingredients as possible, you are done.

Extra steps

If, like me, you want your oat milk a little creamier and with added calcium, there are a few extra steps.

• Quickly rinse the blender with water
• Pour the oat milk back into the blender
• Add 4 grams of lithothamnium. 
• Add 1 teaspoon of oil
• Blend again on medium speed for +/- 5 to 10 seconds. I usually use speed 6 or 6+ (my blender goes up to 10).

You can now pour your oat milk into a bottle and enjoy your fresh glass of oat milk. I drink 1 glass a day, you can leave it in the fridge for a day or 4.

Waste?

What do you do with the filter pulp? Throwing it away would be a real waste. You can use it in different products. I almost always use it in my bread, instead of 500 grams of flour I use 450 + the pulp. It also affects the amount of water needed for the bread, I use between 15 and 20% less water, depending on the type of flour. You can also use it for all kinds of other baking recipes like cookies or pancakes.