Holistic Recipe of the Week: Homemade Nut Milks
Categories: Health, Healthy Eating, Holistic Recipe
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I like to keep my consumption of processed, pasteurized dairy at a minimum. While I'm a big fan of the idea of healthy raw milk consumption, I think too much pasteurized dairy can lead to a lot of health issues - not the least of which being allergies. A good way to cut down on this dairy is to substitute it with nut milks like almond milk, cashew milk or even walnut milk. I'd skip the soy milk unless you have some way of fermenting the soy beans before using them in the recipe, otherwise all the anti-nutrients that are part of the soy bean will still be active.
So here is a quick, easy and delicious way to cut down on processed foods – replace store-bought nut or grain milks with homemade! The recipe is easy and you can use any nuts. I suggest raw nuts over roasted, and try to get them as fresh as is possible, in shell if you can - the fats in nuts can go rancid in short time. I've tried almonds and hazelnuts myself, and they both turned out great. I've also been meaning to try pine nuts or sunflower seeds. Let me know if you've tried any other types and how they went for you.
Recipe for Homemade Nut Milk after the jump.
Homemade Nut Milk
1 cup raw nuts of your choice
4 cups filtered water
1 healthy pinch of unrefined sea salt
1 Tbsp. unpasteurized honey (optional)
In a large bowl, cover nuts in water and soak overnight (they will expand). Discard the water in the morning and rinse the nuts.
Place nuts in a blender with 4 cups of filtered water, salt and honey (the honey is just there to add a little sweetness). Blend for a few minutes. Strain mixture using either a fine strainer or few layers of cheese cloth. I've taken a que from the raw foodists and found these very fine paint straining bags in hardware stores that work really great for this.
Voila! You've got yourself some nut milk, perfect for hot or cold cereal, adding to teas or using as a dairy substitute in recipes.
The Healthy Foodie is Doug DiPasquale, Holistic Nutritionist and trained chef, living in Toronto. You can email him with questions at dugdeep@gmail.com.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Sue 3-31-2009 @ 9:52AM
Re. the nut milk recipe.
If we discard the water we soak the nuts in, wouldn't we lose some or many of the nutrients? Please comment. Many thanks Sue
Reply
Healthy Foodie 3-24-2009 @ 1:57PM
Actually, the purpose of soaking nuts, grains or legumes is to get rid of anti-nutrients, not nutrients. Seeds have things called enzyme inhibitors which keep them from sprouting prematurely. These enzyme inhibitors have a good purpose in the seed, but when we eat them they can interfere with our own digestive enzymes and make them difficult to digest. When the seeds detect a suitable environment for growing (like having lots of water around) the enzyme inhibitors are deactivated and the seed begins to sprout. Since there may still be some of these anti-nutrients left in the soaking water or on the surface of the nut, grain or legume, we discard the soaking water and rinse the seeds.
Cal 3-28-2009 @ 7:43PM
True, but don't you still lose the water soluble B vitamins?
Healthy Foodie 3-31-2009 @ 3:10AM
Perhaps if you ground the nuts before soaking you might lose some of the B vitamins, but I can't see whole nuts losing any of their internal vitamins. As far as I know, soaking nuts doesn't remove any of their nutrients.
Stewart Bartlett 3-24-2009 @ 11:54PM
What can I do with what is left of the nuts after they are drained? I asume there is lots of good stuff still left in them.
Reply