How to Make Vegan Milk at Home
Everyone’s latest at-home obsession: making their own dairy-free milk. If you, too, are interested in showing cows and goats some love, honoring your own body, and saving a few bucks in the process, you’ve come to the right place. Making plant-based milk in the comfort of your kitchen is a simple and rewarding process—peruse our guide to discover how to make vegan milk.
How to Make Almond Milk
Making your own almond milk is super-easy. All you’ll need are some raw almonds, filtered water, sea salt, a blender, and a nut milk bag (although a thin dish towel will work in a pinch). To make chocolate almond milk, just add in some cocoa powder. Check out this recipe and how-to video, courtesy of The Minimalist Baker:
Pro Tip #1: Get yourself a nut milk bag! If you’re attempting to make almond, cashew, peanut, or any other nut milk, you’ll need one. Plus, you can wash and reuse the bag to make ginger shots and other fun vegan recipes. 🥜
How to Make Oat Milk
Whether your local Kroger is out of Oatly or you just want to control what ingredients go into the milk that you’re pouring over your cereal, making your own oat milk is the way to go. Oat milk is one of the easiest vegan milks to make. Unlike most nut milks, it doesn’t require a special bag—a strainer will do just fine. Which type of oats are the best to use for oat milk? Opt for old-fashioned rolled oats, as quick oats and steel-cut oats will result in a milk with a watery consistency. Try this creamy, slightly sweet homemade oat milk recipe from The Green Creator:
Pro Tip #2: Invest in a glass jug or some glass jars. Over time, chemicals from some plastic containers can leach into your food. But glass is nonporous and chemical-free, making it ideal for storing your homemade dairy-free milk. 🥛
How to Make Soy Milk
Why would you drink a pus-filled secretion stolen from a mother cow, when making your own delicious soy milk is as easy as 1 (soybeans), 2 (water), 3 (sweetener)? Make sure you use yellow soybeans, and vanilla extract or the seeds scraped from a vanilla bean pod work great as a sweetener. For an easy recipe, follow along with this video from Mary’s Test Kitchen:
Pro Tip #3: Many vegan milk recipes recommend soaking the main ingredient (almonds, oats, soybeans, etc.) overnight. So if you want to enjoy your dairy-free milk tomorrow, be sure to start soaking your ingredients tonight. 😴
How to Make Coconut Milk
Short of slicing open a mature, brown, fuzzy coconut and spoon eating its flesh, it doesn’t get any more refreshing than homemade coconut milk. You can use fresh coconut meat, unsweetened shredded coconut, or unsweetened coconut flakes. Coconut milk is great on its own, but it’s also delicious in coffee and tea or as a curry base. Watch the video below for a super-simple coconut milk recipe that requires only two ingredients:
Pro Tip #4: Add a sweetener to any of these recipes to suit yourself. Throw in a pitted date or two, add some vanilla extract, or drop in a tablespoonful of maple syrup. To make your own vegan chocolate milk, mix in some cocoa powder. 🍫
How to Make Rice Milk
The Harvard Nurses’ Health Study found that consuming two or more glasses of cow’s milk a day put people at a higher risk for broken hips and arms than those who drank one or fewer glasses a day. If you want to retain the calcium that you consume, try drinking rice milk instead. With about 283 mg of calcium per cup, it’s a clear winner. Plus, rice milk is inexpensive to make and a great option for those who are allergic to soy, gluten, or tree nuts. Try it for yourself:
Pro Tip #5: To make things even easier, consider buying an automated plant-based milk maker like Almond Cow. Although they’re a bit of an investment, they speed up the milk-making process, saving you time and money in the long term. 🐄
How to Make Hemp Milk
Hemp milk is like a gift from the vegan gods: High in calcium and protein, it contains an ideal ratio of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids. And if you’re wondering “Does hemp milk contain THC?” or “Does hemp milk get you high?” don’t worry—hemp milk is made using the seeds of the hemp plant, which won’t get you high. So make some nutritious, nonpsychoactive homemade hemp milk today:
Pro Tip #6: The main ingredients mentioned above are only a few of the many that can be used to make vegan milk at home. There’s also cashew, pecan, black sesame, and even blueberry-lavender milk—the possibilities are endless! For organized, cost-effective vegan milk making, consider buying bulk quantities of your preferred main ingredient. 🤑
Why You Should Drink Only Vegan Milk
Cows and goats produce milk for the same reason that human mothers do: to nurse their young. So to think that imprisoning female animals, exerting reproductive control over them, kidnapping their babies, stealing their milk, and then buying, selling, or consuming it is acceptable is plain ol’ speciesism (and sexism and human supremacism). Cows and goats should be left in peace to do the things that come naturally to them, like shedding tears over lost loved ones (cows) and nursing their babies for roughly six months (goats). No one should be treated like a milk-making machine.
Other animals have one-upped us—besides humans (and companion animals who are fed by humans), no species drinks milk beyond the age of weaning or drinks the milk of another species. Our bodies fight cow’s milk, which has been linked to many human health concerns, including prostate cancer, ovarian cancer, superbugs, weight gain, high cholesterol, and acne. And dairy “products” are no friend to the planet, either: In California, America’s top milk-producing state, manure from dairy farms has poisoned hundreds of square miles of groundwater, rivers, and streams. The dairy industry is also the primary source of smog-forming pollutants in the state—a single cow emits more of these harmful gases than a car does.
The COVID-19 pandemic means that this could be the last time you see cow’s milk on grocery store shelves—hooray! Get ahead of the game: Make dairy-free milk at home and go vegan today.
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You’re now a vegan milk-making expert—and we’re here to make everything about being vegan as easy as making your own dairy-free milk is. Click on the link below to order a free vegan starter kit full of recipes, tips on making the compassionate switch, and more.
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