I was starving and desperately craving pancakes yesterday and had no soy milk handy. Rather than lug out the soy milk machine, I decided to try using the blender to whip up some oat milk. Of course, I didn’t have time to look up any recipes because I was, as I said, STARVING. So here’s what I did, mistakes and all:

  1. I failed to measure anything. I thought I’d just eyeball it and throw some oats and water in the blender. Probably shoulda measured. I used regular oats because that’s what I had but I don’t think it’d really make a difference.
  2. Blended the mess until I thought the blender was gonna choke.
  3. I knew that I’d have to somehow strain this mess so that the milk wasn’t pulpy and since I didn’t have any nut bags, I decided to use half a flour sack towel. Bad idea. Not porous enough.
  4. I lined a mesh strainer with the towel and propped that at the rim of a large bowl.
  5. I started pouring the oat/water mixture from the blender into the towel/strainer/bowl and realized that while I was setting up my strainer, the oats were gettin’ gloopier and thicker. MUCH thicker. I really should have used twice as much water.
  6. Anyway, I poured…and scraped, the mess into the strainer. Nothing strained. Nada.
  7. Sooo, I pulled up the corners of the towel, twisted and started trying to squeeze the milk out. THIS was very slow goin’ and really gross. The milk came out of the pores of the towel like a gel, actually more like gloopy egg whites. I periodically had to scrape the milk/gel off the outside of the towel and into the bowl.
  8. After getting about a cup of milk/gel, I threw in the towel. (Ha!, I’ve always wanted to make that a pun).
  9. Then I simply replaced the soy milk in my favorite pancake recipe (which is from Isa’s Vegan with a Vengeance) with oat milk. Of course, the oat milk was so thick, I had to add more water to loosen up the batter so it was pour able. I didn’t make it too thin though and that’s one of the reasons my pancakes were so danged thick. Somewhere between 1/2 and 3/4 inch thick!

What would I do differently?

Two things:

  • Use a lot more water, how much? I dunno. Maybe 2 to 3 cups water to 1 cup oats? I’d start with that and see how it goes.
  • Buy a nut bag and use that for straining. This is what they’re made for and I obviously don’t know shit about them since I thought I could substitute a flour sack towel.
  • Probably add a pinch of salt to punch up the flavor. And maybe vanilla and a sweetener if I wasn’t cooking with it.