Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Paleo Milk - Walnut Milk

Sometimes I just want a glass of milk - or something made with milk.  Homemade nut milk is a great alternative to dairy.  It is creamy and has a great taste.  I like to use it in smoothies, in my morning coffee or to make paleo hot cocoa.  Plus it's super easy to make!

Many nut milks are readily availiable at the supermarket.  While these are good - I find they have many non-paleo addititives.  I like walnut milk better than other nut alternatives because it has omega-3s in it!

Ingredients:
  • 1 cup Walnuts
  • 2 tsp Vanilla
  • Favorite Paleo Sweetner to taste
Instructions:
  1. Soak walnuts in water for at least 8 hours in the refridgerator.
  2. Rinse walnuts and place in blender with about 4 cups water (use 2 cups if you want very rich milk, 5 cups if you like skim milk - 4 is similar to 2% milk to me)
  3. Add vanilla and sweetener.  I used about 10 drops of stevia.
  4. Blend for 2-3 minutes.
  5. Use cheese cloth or wire strainer (or cheese cloth in wire strainer) to strain out remaining walnut chunks.  If you use a cheesecloth you'll need to fold up the cloth and squeeze the liquid out.  I simply use a wire strainer - my milk has some "solids" in it.  The small solids don't bother me - maybe I'm just lazy!
Bonus!
The remaining walnut solids can be used in future recipes!  Take the wet solids and throw them on a cookie sheet then put them in the oven at 250 F until dried out (~30 minutes).  

Nutritional Info - I don't know what the nutritional info is on this!  I find that you end up with a large amount of walnut solids after making this recipe - so it's difficult to quantify how much you ended up with vs how much is actually in the milk.