I couldn’t go so far as to title this Rice Milk—Good Eats at the TEOTWAWKI Café. That might be taking things too far. I could be accused of false advertising.
OK, it wasn’t really that bad. Actually, it wasn’t bad at all.
So I’ve been working the past two months on the next compilation of blog articles into books—Volume 3 of Good Eats focusing on the long-term storage grains. And I was looking at the beverages—horchata, oat smoothies, and oat milk. Only three entries in a chapter is kinda sad. And then I remembered there’s this thing called rice milk. Naturally something avoided by folks like me who are quite content with whole cow milk.
And I don’t buy into the ridiculous I eat only plants so you should too. Or that milk is somehow bad or that cows are destroying the planet. Because those are some of the more ridiculous notions ever expressed on this planet.
There are those people who, much to their sorrow usually, cannot tolerate dairy. Sometimes it starts in childhood; sometimes it’s adult onset. And sometimes it happens within our own families. Or you might need to tell a neighbor how to make some rice milk from all that rice they stored with the beans and which they deceived themselves into thinking they would be so happy to eat day in and day out. It would be good to be prepared for such an issue.
Rice Milk
1 cup cooked rice
4 cups water
Blend on high speed to desired consistency. Blend 20-30 seconds for “light” rice milk, 2 minutes for “creamy” rice milk.
Then strain through a nut milk bag. (While you’re more prepared than I and probably have one or two nut milk bags, I’d never heard of them until researching for this article.) Lacking a proper nut milk bag, I opted to run the processed rice milk through a clean flour sack towel. I had blended my rice milk for 2 minutes because I wanted it to be nice and creamy. Most of it filtered through the flour sack towel almost immediately, with only a tablespoon in the towel a minute later.
Rice milk will last 4-5 days in the refrigerator. Once it begins to sour, it may be used like sour milk or buttermilk in baking.
Suggestions for improving the flavor: A handful of soaked cashews added when blending will make the rice milk even creamier. Sweeten with sugar, molasses, maple syrup, or dates. A touch of vanilla, cinnamon, or nutmeg may help. And, of course, chocolate milk mix.
Family reviews: Aaron and I definitely did not like plain rice milk. I added ½ teaspoon vanilla extract and 1 teaspoon sugar, and that helped some. Then I stirred in some chocolate milk mix, and while we knew we weren’t drinking milk, the chocolate rice milk was definitely much more palatable. I could happily drink it in a crisis.
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