Homemade chesnut milk (gluten free)

Let’s start the year off right with a fitting winter milk: chestnut milk.

If you’re a fan of chestnuts, you absolutely need to try this milk. Not only is it delicious, but it’s also really wholesome. It contains a hefty amount of low GI carbohydrates, vitamin B, iron, potassium and fibre. It’s also gluten and dairy-free approved and low in calories, even. What more could you ask for?

Chestnut milk can be made in a couple different ways, but my favourite one is when you use roasted chestnuts. You can roast them at home or buy them like that, usually from street vendors who you can find during autumn/winter.

All that you need to make this delicious drink is a ChufaMix, a hand blender and 5 minutes of your time. Let’s get to it!

Ingredients:

• 1 litre of water
• 24 peeled roasted chestnuts (must be soaked for 8 hours)
• 2 tablespoons raw cane sugar
• A pinch of salt

Method

1. Fill the ChufaMix jar with a litre of water
2. In the filtering attachment, put the previously soaked chesnuts, sugar and salt.
3. Blend for a minute until chesnuts are completely reduced to crumbs.
4. Let mixture chill for 10 minutes.
5. De-attach the filtre using the express press trick.
6. Using the mortar, squeeze the last droplets of milk out of the pulp.

Remember than milk will always taste better after 2 hours, when it’s had time to chill and develop the flavours. If it’s still too bland for you, you can add yur favourite sweetener (cinnamon, syrup, vanilla, etc) and blend again.

Upcycle the pulp:

Delicious homemade chesnut milk pulp

The remaining pulp serves as a lovely chestnut cream which needs no help from other ingredients and can be devoured just like that. If you’re into cooking, you can check out the “pulp” tab in our blog and see some wonderful ideas on how to upcycle all kinds of pulp to make delicious plant-based meals.

You could also dry out the pulp at a low temperature in the oven or even sun-dry it!

If you cannot using right away, feel free to freeze it. Don’t throw it away, it’s so good that it would be a complete waste!

What a way to start the year off right! Cheers!