Basic Nut Milk Recipe (+ a Low-Mess Kitchen Hack)

This basic nut milk recipe uses a reusable coffee filter instead of cheesecloth to make delicious nut milk without making a big sticky mess of the kitchen.

Hehe….nut milk.

I love homemade cashew and almond milk, but with a toddler to chase, a messy recipe like the one I usually follow just felt like too much to do on a regular basis. The cheese cloth method works great, but it tends to be drippy and spilly. I wanted to come up with a way to make nut milks that was easier and tidier.

My original plan was to make the milk in our old Chemex, but that didn’t really work out. My son had fun helping me pour the liquid and pulp into the filter, and he liked watching it drain for the first 30 seconds.

And then it stopped draining, no matter what I did. Those paper Chemex filters were too thick to work, I think.

Luckily, I have a coffee-obsessed husband, so I rummaged through our cabinet of coffee doodads. After a few other fails, I stumbled upon a regular old $6 reusable coffee filter.

You guys. This thing worked like a charm! It did have trouble draining at first, but a little bit of stirring kept things moving nicely. And the filter contained all of the mess. No drips, no spills. It was like magic.

I can’t wait to try variations on this basic nut milk recipe! I’ll definitely be making a vanilla one, and I’d like to also try fruity milks by tossing some frozen berries into the blender when I puree the soaked nuts.

What are your favorite variations on a basic nut milk recipe?

Homemade Nut Milk Recipe

Yield: about 2 cups (1 pint) of nut milk. You can double this recipe easily. Just make sure that your container is big enough to hold about twice as much liquid.

Ingredients

• 3/4 cups raw nuts of your choice, placed in a bowl with enough water to cover (They do need to be raw. Roasted nuts will not work well in this recipe.)
• 1 3/4 cups additional water
• 1 tablespoon brown sugar or maple syrup (optional, but recommended)
• 1 reusable mesh coffee filter, like this one
• a large pitcher – For even less cleanup, strain right into your storage container! I did not do that this time, but next time I will for sure. I’m lookin’ at you, wide mouth quart-sized mason jar!

Method

1. Soak the nuts for at least 4 hours, up to overnight. Drain.
2. Transfer the drained nuts to your blender, and add the water and sugar, if you’re using it. Puree until it’s as smooth as possible.
3. Nestle your reusable coffee filter into the top of a large pitcher or other wide-mouth container, and slowly pour in your nut puree. You might have to do this in stages, especially if you double the recipe. Just keep pouring more in as the level in the filter goes down.
4. If things aren’t moving along, gently stir the puree in the filter, scraping the sides of the filter as you stir, until it starts draining again.
5. You’re done when you’re looking at a filter full of thick nut pulp and liquid doesn’t drain, even when you press the pulp to squeeze the last drops out. You’ll be left with a grainy pulp, sort of the consistency of thick oatmeal.
6. Compost that pulp, and drink that milk UP! You can store whatever you don’t drink in the fridge for 3-4 days.

A version of this article originally ran at Glue and Glitter