Adventures in Plant Milk Making

Last year around this time I started experimenting with making almond milk at home. I was surprised at how easy it was: you basically just soak almonds, put them in a blender with water, and then strain through a cheese cloth or other fabric. I liked how empowering this felt, to be able to whip up milk at home rather than having to run to the store for it, expending money, gas, and packaging for a product that contained ingredients like thickeners and sweeteners that I didn’t really want. Making almond milk this way, you are left with almond pulp, which I didn’t want to just throw out, but luckily was able to incorporate into some improvised almond pulp cookies, which were not too bad.

The almond milk itself was creamy and tasty (though June does not like it as much as whole cow’s milk), but I got to thinking about how much water almonds take to produce and how expensive the nuts are, so I decided to try out a more economical and sustainable plant milk: oat milk.

Oats and water, a pinch of salt, blend it up, and strain. This was like magic! And the oat pulp was easily used in another improvised cookie, too. We liked the taste of the oat milk maybe a bit more than the almond milk, even, though it did seem to separate easily in the refrigerator and was thinner than desired (this can be easily remedied by decreasing the proportion of water used).

I was considering going with a blend of oat and almond as our go-to homemade milk, but decided to first research the nutritional content of various plant milks. It was reading through charts like this one (bottom of page) that I discovered another possibility that looked intriguing: pea milk.

Pea milk is said to contain more protein and potassium than other plant milks, while having no sugar and more calcium and Vitamin D than cow’s milk. The peas that folks use for this milk are not green peas, but rather yellow split peas. I decided to give it a try.

Early in the process, I was already discouraged. While almonds, I just had to soak before popping in the blender, and oats could go straight in without soaking, the recipe for pea milk I was following said I had to first soak the peas, and then cook them to a mush. I then waited for that mush to cool before putting it in the blender. I added a few dates, as per recipe instructions, figuring the sweetness from those would serve to cover up any pea taste, and vanilla.

This was already more complicated than making almond or oat milk, but I was game to try. I blended the mixture up with water, tried to strain it through my cheese cloth, and, yuck. What a mess. The liquid had trouble straining through, and what did was either thin and watery, or unappealingly frothy. It was also a deep yellow color that did not look appealing to put in coffee or tea. I poured the “milk” into a pitcher, stirred it up to try to get it more homogeneous, and then took a taste. Hideous! I am not a picky eater/drinker, especially with something I’ve made myself at home, but I don’t think I’ll be able to drink this pea milk, the pea taste is so strong, and the sweetness incongruous beside it. No wonder the author was mentioning having adopted their recipe from one designed for use in feeding tubes! I will have to see if I can slip it into a baked good or other recipe where it can be overshadowed somehow.

With no cartoned milk in the house, and a terrible taste in my mouth, I could really use some of that nice creamy almond or oat milk right about now! Next to try at home will be rice and soy.

*Update: Pea milk now successfully used in a banana smoothie with cinnamon, cardamom, and peanut butter (surprisingly tasty!), in making extra fluffy scrambled eggs, and in lentil soup.