Making my own Oat Milk
After trying out a few of the plant-based drinks at Starbucks, I got inspired to make my own plant-based milk, so here I am trying out home-made oat milk!
I searched up some recipes online and most of them simply required rolled oats and water as the main base ingredients (These are simple recipes meant for home-made oat milk). From the brief research I had done, apparently, rolled oats is the best option as compared to other types of oats like instant or steel-cut oats. Steel-cut oats are too tough to blend, while instant oats are too processed and disintegrate easily when blended which makes the end product slimy.
So I headed down to the nearest supermarket and got myself a tiny packet of rolled oats! I also got a nut milk bag to strain the oats residue to filter the oat milk.
Time to make the oat milk
According to the few articles that I looked up, many mentioned about adding 1 cup of rolled oats to 4 cups of water. So I added rolled oats to water in a 1 to 4 ratio into my high speed blender. Then I blended the mixture for about 40 seconds till the rolled oats were blended into really tiny pieces, leaving behind the oat pulp. After shaking it for a little bit, I filtered the mixture using the nut milk bag into a small bowl.
My thoughts
From the first impression, it was creamier than I thought and it did get a little messy while trying to strain the milk using the filter bag (some of the milk spilled out, but no worries, I got it cleaned up!). As expected, the flavor of it was quite bland since I didn’t add anything to it, but it was my first try, so I wanted to just try it out without adding any additional ingredients.
Trying it again!
Now that I have somewhat got the hang of it, it’s time to be a little more ambitious for the next try! To spice things up a little (not the literal sense of adding spice to the oat milk), I decided to add some honey and a pinch of salt to make it more flavorful.
Similar to before, I added rolled oats to water, but this time, I added 5 spoons of water for each spoon of rolled oats. Then I added 1 spoon of honey and a small pinch of salt before blending the mix for around 45 seconds. After straining it with the nut milk bag, everything was done and my oat milk came out nicely!
This time, it was definitely more delicious and sweeter than before thanks to the honey, although it could use more unique flavors. Maybe adding cocoa powder or matcha powder might be on the list for future tries.
Also, unlike the previous time where I threw away the oat pulp, this time round, I kept the remaining oat pulp and spread it on my morning toast. It was nice touch to the toast since the honey made the toast a little sweeter.
Oat pulp has lots of nutrients, mainly being high in fiber which has many health benefits like reducing cholesterol levels, regulating bowel movements and more. It was certainly regretful to have thrown it away the previous time (also, it’s not good to contribute to food waste!). :(
Not only can oat pulp be used as a ‘topping’ for toast, it can be incorporated into various foods as well! I came across a few websites, and they mentioned examples of oat pulps being used to make overnight soaked oats, cookies and more.
Looking forward to more!
While I won’t be able to try out these simple home-made recipes everyday, it will be something fun to do when I have some free time to spare and take a break from my studies and work! Definitely looking forward to making more of such delicious plant-based foods!
Do comment down on some delicious and amazing simple plant-based recipes that you have tried out. Would love to see and try them out!