Rice Milk and Rice Yogurt Recipe

So ever since I stopped eating sugar I have been having a lot of difficulty with various milks. Unsweetened soy milk is too chalky for me and rice milk is just too watery. Almond, oat, and almond milk are hard for me to find unsweetened and hazelnut is just impossible to find at all.

But then it occurred to me...why don't I just make my own milk? So I did! This recipe is from the VeganReader and makes about 2 quarts.

How to make Rice Milk

Ingredients:

• 1 cup uncooked organic long grain brown rice
• 8 cups water for cooking
• More water for diluting
• 1 teaspoon salt
• Sweetener of your choice (I like a combination of maple syrup and vanilla)
  

Directions:

• Thoroughly wash the rice.
• Put 8 cups of water in a big pot and bring it to a boil over high heat.
• Pour in the rice.
• Cover the pot and lower the heat to let the water simmer for 3 hours.
  

I will be honest, the cooked rice after 3 hours looks like a failed rice pudding you would probably throw away, but I swear that is what it should look like! Now add the salt.

Using a blender, fill it halfway with the rice mash and half way with water. BLEND. Strain twice into a large pot or directly into a mason jar. You will probably have 2 or 3 batches to blend. Now add a sweeter (if you so desire)! Done!

The final 'milk' will be really thick and creamy. Feel free to add more water to the mixture for your desired consistency. Or...keep half of it as milk and make the other half into rice yogurt!

How to make Yogurt (vegan style)

Now yogurt is something I have always wanted to try, but never found a milk I thought would be thick enough to make into a yogurt. After decided to make my own rice milk however, I knew I had to try yogurt.

The recipe is real simple:

Ingredients:

• 1 quart rice milk (or any milk for that matter)
• 3-4 tablespoons yogurt with LIVE cultures and NO PRESERVATIVES (I just went ahead and bought some real greek yogurt because of the sugars in soy yogurt, but you can buy whatever yogurt works for you or powdered yogurt cultures from most health food stores)

Directions:

• Heat the milk on the stove top to ~150 degrees F (this is to kill any unwated bacteria)
• Cool the milk to somewhere between ~100 and 110 degrees F. Warmer then this will kill off the yogurt cultures.
• Add the yogurt and mix thoroughly.
• Add the mixture to a clean and sterilized glass jar. Seal the jar. The jar MUST be sterilized or else you will get some nasty stuff in there.
• Find a warm place (again, ~100 degrees F) for the glass jar to go (I like the oven on very very low with the light on) and leave it there for 4-8 hours. The timing depends upon how sour you like your yogurt. This is the tricky stage however because if the temperature goes above 110 the cultures will die off, so keep an eye on the prize!
  

The final product will be a bit more watery then your traditional yogurt, but I hear you can add agar if you want to thicken it up.

Well there you go! Homemade milk and yogurt! What more could you ask for?