The other day, I was talking to my friend E. I admire the way she feeds her family: organic, natural, wholesome foods all the way. The problem is, I’m just too cheap to make that switch. I’ve always got my eyes peeled for small changes we can make, and I found one. E told me about homemade rice milk. I assumed it was difficult, time consuming, or otherwise excusable. It’s not. Rice milk is ultra easy to make, and fabulous!
This recipe is very forgiving, and I honestly didn’t measure anything, but you’ll get the idea.
Rice Milk Recipe
- 1 cup brown rice
- 4 cups water
- Vanilla extract
- Sugar
- Extra water for thinning
Simmer water and rice for a few hours until the rice is mushy. Give it an occasional stir. If the water level gets low, just toss in a little more. Again, this is not specific, so just roll with it. Blend the cooked rice and water quickly. I did this in two batches, running the blender for about 10 seconds each time. Strain; a nut bag would probably work best, or a couple of layers of cheesecloth. Go figure, I didn’t have either on hand, so I just used a fine metal strainer; it worked ok and honestly, I’ll probably just do it again this way next time.
At this point, the rice milk will be very thick and pretty bland, but totally usable. Right now, you could use it in place of cream in a lot of recipes, but I prefer to add vanilla, sugar, and some more water. It makes the milk more like the stuff you buy in the store in quarts. After thinning, I ended up with 8 cups of rice milk and added about a tablespoon of vanilla and 2 tablespoons of sugar. Thin the rice milk as little or as much as you want; there’s no wrong answer here.
Store it in the fridge and use it up in about a week.
OK, now go try it! For the cost of a cup of rice, what have you got to lose!?
