Non Dairy Milk and Yogurt

We have a few cooking projects that we are working on this summer. We have made non dairy milk before but have never come up with a specific recipe that we could regularly make to have in our pantry in lieu of buying cartons of milk. This milk will now be incorporated into our larder.

Non-Dairy Milk:

2 cups cashews
1 cup rolled oats
1 cup pearled barley
1 cup brown rice

1.Place cashews in a large bowl and cover with 6 cups of boiling water. Let sit for 20 minutes to an hour.

2.Place oats, barley and rice in a large pot. Add 9 cups of water, bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer and let cook for 3 minutes. Cover mixture and let sit for 10 minutes. Letting this mixture sit longer will result in a thicker milk. Do not worry if the grains do not seem completely cooked they are ideal for extracting milk.

3.Place the grain mixture in a high power blender, I suggest at Vita Mix. Blend in batches for 30 seconds each. Strain mixture through a very fine strainer, discard the solid and keep the liquid.

4.Wash the blender thoroughly. Blend the cashew mixture until completely smooth and there is no remaining grainy-ness, about 2 minutes.

5.Combine the cashew and the grain mixture, chill your milk. This might be more of a cream like texture. If this mixture is too thick for your taste or desired use it can be thinned slightly with filtered water.

Non dairy yogurt has always been illusive because what is available at the market has lots of sugar. We are thrilled to have this as an option.

Non Dairy Yogurt:

9 cups non dairy milk (see recipe above)
1 cup yogurt starter (for first batch you can purchase any non dairy live yogurt for subsequent batches you can save 1 cup of your own yogurt to use as the starter) at room temperature

1.Heat milk to 110 degrees. Wisk in yogurt starter. Pour yogurt into glass or plastic containers, leaves lids ajar, partially covering the mixture but allowing air into the yogurt as well.

2.Let containers sit in a warm place at room temperature until yogurt reaches desired sourness and thickness. This will take anywhere from 8-20 hours. Cover with lids and refrigerate.