Friday, July 3, 2020

Homemade Almond Milk


Above:  Pampered Chef’s Deluxe Cooking Blender

Making Homemade Almond Milk

Just before the Corona Virus started spreading across the United States, I attended a Pampered Chef party. My friend, Belinda, is now a consultant for Pampered Chef.  I ordered Pampered Chef’s Deluxe Cooking Blender. It’s a pretty amazing gadget.  You can actually cook soup in the blender.  You can make jam in the blender.  You can grind wheat berries into flour, nuts into nut butters... why you can even grind coffee.  You can make milk out of rice, oats, almonds, cashews, and coconut.  The blender even has a “heated wash” setting so it kind of cleans itself.  I have been having fun finding more and more uses for my new toy  vital cooking implement.  

I’ve made almond milk, cashew milk, and also oat milk in the blender.  Almond milk is my favorite and it was something I routinely bought at the store before I got the blender.  I would also like to try to make rice milk and coconut milk in the future.  My dad asked me if I was saving money by making the almond milk at home.  I can get a three pound bag of raw almonds (9 cups of almonds) at my local Sam’s Club for just under $12.00.  With this I can make 9 quarts of almond milk.  Nine quarts of almond milk at my local grocery store would cost over $18.00. So yes... I am realizing a cost savings by making almond milk at home, but I must also factor in the cost of the fancy schmancy blender.  I do also like the fact that the almond milk I am making contains just two ingredients: almonds and water.  Below I’ve posted some photos of the labels from the almond milk I used to purchase and you will see the store bought, shelf-stable almond milk does contain a number of other ingredients.

So how to you make almond milk in a Deluxe Cooking Blender?  It’s super simple.

Soak 1 cup of raw whole almonds in a few cups of water for about 4 hours.
Drain and rinse the almonds in a mesh sieve. Discard the water used to soak the almonds.
Place the almonds in the Deluxe Cooking Blender along with 5 cups of fresh water.
Set the blender to the “ALT MILK” setting and allow it to run (the cycle runs for 5 minutes).
Pour the milk into a fine mesh bag (the bag below came with the blender).
You do end up having to squeeze the bag to get all the milk out.  
I store the almond milk in the refrigerator in a recycled glass jar.  Almost all of it fits in the jar I have except for about 1/4 cup. 



Above: Draining the milk in the mesh bag.



Above: Almond Milk all done and ready for the refrigerator.



Here are some photos of the last of my store bought almond milk.  I do like that the almond milk I am making at home just contains water and almonds. 




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