Have you every looked at the ingredients in store bought almond milk? Here’s an example from one popular brand:
All Natural Almond Milk (Filtered Water, Almonds), All Natural Evaporated Cane Juice, Calcium Carbonate, Sea Salt, Natural Vanilla Flavor, Dipotassium Phosphate, Locust Bean Gum, Gellan Gum, Sunflower Lecithin, Natural Vitamin E (D-Alpha-Tocopherol), Vitamin A Palmitate, Vitamin D2.
Uhm, no thank you. I can do without the often animal-derived, toxic D2, the unknown origin of the “natural” vanilla flavor, along with the chemical preservatives.
Making your own almond milk at home is not only super easy, but it is more economical as well, and you can be certain you are getting a ton of nutrients in every glass!
Here’s my EASY 4 STEP Rawganic method:
1 cup raw almonds, soaked
4 cups of water
4 Medjool dates, pitted
2 organic vanilla beans, scraped out (or 1 teaspoon pure vanilla)
STEP ONE: soak one cup of raw almonds in pure water for 8-12 hours. (Do not use tap water, your nuts will absorb all the nasties like chlorine. We don’t need nasty nuts).
STEP TWO: drain the almonds and add them into your blender along with 4 cups of pure water (use less water for super creamy — higher fat — almond milk).
***** DO NOT add your dates and vanilla now. Most recipes tell you to add it all at the same time. DON’T! At $7 a vanilla bean, so much of the flavor from the vanilla and sweetness from the dates gets bound up in the fibers of the nuts when you strain it out, you lose a lot of it. No. Be patient and add it AFTER you have strained your milk.
STEP THREE: Blend for a minute. Pour through the nut milk bag (or cheese cloth) into a bowl. Squeeze as much of the liquid from the nut milk bag as possible.
STEP FOUR: Put it back in the blender with dates and vanilla, and give it a whirl for about 20 seconds. DONE!
This recipe makes about 4 cups of fresh almond milk. You can store it in a tightly sealed container for about three days. Always shake before drinking.
