How to make kefir with nut milk

I’ve always loved making kefir and yoghurt with cow’s milk and really missed it when I decided to go dairy free. I missed the taste as well as the tons of beneficial bacteria that help my gut flora. So I wanted to learn how to make kefir with nut milk.

No idea what kefir is? Have a look here.

A messy experiment…

So I started making kefir from plant based milks and I must say it was a bit of a messy experiment. I tried different kinds of coconut, using canned coconut milk until I discovered it had BPA (a hormone disrupting chemical in plastic) in the lining of the can. I then tried creamed coconut, that comes in a block, that you dissolve in hot water.

The problem for me with making kefir from coconut is that there’s quite a lot of (good) fat that’s solid at room temperature and that makes it hard to strain out the kefir grains once the kefir is ready.

Cashews make it easier!

But now I’ve found an easy way to make nut milk kefir with cashews!

I soak 1 cup of raw cashews in water for about four hours, together with two dates. These don’t have to be expensive medjool dates, any organic dates will do.

I then rinse them and add three cups of filtered water to the soaked nuts and dates. Next step is to whizz them up in my nutribullet for about two minutes. That’s all: my cashew nut milk is ready.

Next step: I put a heaped teaspoon of kefir grains in a jam jar and add the nut milk and leave it on my kitchen counter for 24 hours. I store the rest of the nut milk in the fridge for later use. It keeps for about three days.

It’s then easy to strain our the kefir grains through a plastic sieve, pop the grains into a clean jar and add the nut milk I kept in the fridge.

I like it for breakfast with a grated apple, some nuts, ground linseed and cacao nibs.

Enjoy!