This creamy and delicious homemade oat milk recipe is made with 2-ingredients, ready in minutes, and delicious in tea or coffee or poured over cereal.
It’s so easy to make your own homemade oat milk!
It has a lovely neutral oaty taste that is delicious to drink as is or to use in smoothies, over cereal, or in your coffee and tea.
All you need is some rolled oats in your cupboard and you’re good to go. Rolled oats blended with water = oat milk!
You can also add a little maple syrup, vanilla extract and a pinch of salt for some optional extra flavoring, but the main ingredients are simply rolled oats and water.
How To Make Oat Milk
You will find full instructions and measurements in the recipe card at the bottom of the post. This is a summary of the process to go along with the process photos.
- Add all the ingredients to the blender jug and blend for around 1 minute until well blended.
- Strain it through a nut milk bag and you have a creamy and delicious homemade plant milk to use as you please.
Tips For The Best Homemade Oat Milk
- Don’t soak the oats first. A lot of recipes recommend soaking your rolled oats first and then rinsing them very well to remove any sliminess before blending. Yes, oats get slimy. It’s weird. But I actually found in experimenting that the best results came about from not soaking the oats at all. It’s also quicker this way. So just add your oats and water to the blender (plus optional flavorings) and blend!
- Don’t over-blend. Over-blending can also cause the oat milk texture to feel slimy. So you just want to blend it well enough and then stop blending. Usually 1 minute of blending will be more than enough.
- Strain your oat milk. I strain it through a nut milk bag (also sometimes called a nut mylk bag). This is the nut mylk bag I have and am very happy with. To get really smooth oat milk you may even want to strain it twice. You can also strain it through a thin tea towel.
- Don’t heat your oat milk. This homemade oat milk is great in tea or coffee or over cereal. However, it’s not great heated as it tends to get quite thick and clumpy when you heat it. So you can add it to hot drinks and that’s fine, but don’t heat it up before adding it to hot drinks.
What To Do With Leftover Oat Pulp?
A reader commented that they add it to pancake batter to create a nuttier tasting version (awesome idea, thanks Susan!).
You can also use the pulp to make cookies. I found a great recipe for Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Pulp Cookies that does exactly this.
This recipe doesn’t result in a huge amount of leftover pulp so you’re also fine to just throw it away unless that is something that goes against the grain for you. If that’s the case then bake some cookies or throw it into some pancakes.
Storing Tips
Keep it stored in the fridge where it will stay fresh for up to 5 days. Shake it up before use as it tends to separate in the fridge, don’t worry this is normal, give it a good shake and enjoy.
More Easy Vegan DIY Recipes
- How To Make Almond Milk
- How To Make Cashew Milk
- Vegan Buttermilk
- Vegan Condensed Milk
- Homemade Vegan Butter
- Vegan Heavy Cream Substitute
Did you make this recipe? Be sure to leave a comment and rating below!
Homemade Oat Milk
Ingredients
- 1 cup Rolled Oats (90g)
- 4 cups Water (960ml)
- ¼ teaspoon Salt Optional
- 2 Tablespoons Maple Syrup Optional
- 1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract Optional
Instructions
- Add all the ingredients to your blender and blend until well blended. Don't blend for more than 1 minute.
- Strain through a nut milk bag or a tea towel.
- Store the milk in the fridge where it will stay fresh for up to 5 days. Shake it well before use.
- Use in your tea or coffee or pour over cereal.
Video
Notes
- Don’t soak your oats first, I found this caused sliminess, no matter how much they were rinsed.
- Don’t overblend as it can also cause the oats to become slimy. You shouldn’t need to blend for more than a minute.
- Don’t heat the milk as it causes it to get very thick and clumpy. It can be added to hot drinks like tea and coffee though.
- This recipe is gluten-free as long as you use gluten-free rolled oats.
Sam A says
Can I use a strainer instead of a nut milk cloth? Thanks 🙂
Alison Andrews says
You can put cheesecloth over a strainer and strain it through that. The strainer alone likely isn’t fine enough.
Henrietta Fernandez says
Hi Alison,
I’ve made quite a lot of milk lately (Oatly is sold out in all shops too recently in Brighton, UK.
I’ve tried soaking and non soaking and both seem to be the same tbh to me. I’ve found the best flavour is with steel cut oats.
I’ve managed to heat it gently and add to my morning coffee- however it doesn’t froth well.
Also, it always separates even in the cup- so usually I have to leave a spoon in to keep it together! I know that Oatly and other commercial milks use some oil so I might try that, which may help to bind it together better?
Also re the leftover oats. I toasted some mixed nuts, ground them in my cofeee grinder, added them to the oats with some Biona
Coconut powder, half a vegetable stock cube and mixed herbs, and made them into sausage shapes, put in oven for twenty mins, and absolutely delicious!
Any hints on how to stop milk separating would be great, thanks!
Sara says
Have you tried toasting the oats before integrating them into the recipe? Thought it might add some extra flavour that could be nice, but I’m not sure if it would change the texture (assume no, but haven’t made it before!).
Alison Andrews says
Hi Sara, I haven’t tried it like that, no idea how it might work out. I went looking on google to see if I could find any info but came up blank! So it would be a total experiment! Let us know if you try it. 🙂
Sara says
Tried with with toasted oats – super good flavour! I’d really recommend trying it 🙂
Alison Andrews says
Awesome! Thanks for letting us know, will definitely try it. 🙂
Daniele Roy says
Would it be OK to not strain the Oats out of the milk?
suzi says
I am playing with this recipe of yours. Had my first attempt and now trying one more time. I see not to heat too high and that was one mistake made in my hot chai. My question is, the type of oat. I buy the extra thick whole oats. Is there a “best” oat to use as far as best result in your opinion?
Alison Andrews says
I have only made this with regular rolled oats, and I have a link in the recipe card it. Not sure how extra thick oats would affect this recipe, if it all.
Ashleigh Cheung says
I found that when I tried frothing the oat milk for a hot chocolate, it just didn’t want to know. Plus, it turned into more of a watery custard consistency – not great! Not sure if you have any advice on the matter?
Secondly, I’m aware that you do not soak your oats to help prevent gloopiness. I’ve read in other posts (not yours) that if you don’t soak the oats, your body will find it a lot harder to digest. Do you have any knowledge or thoughts on this?
Thanks in advance!
Ruben says
Most commercial “barista edition” oat milk contains more than just oats and water. I’d check their ingredients list and see what you could experiment with. I heard oatly uses rapeseed oil so maybe that might help with consistency.
Cherry says
Amazing! I think I’m going to make this every week! I was buying oat milk in the shops but this is SO easy to make that I don’t think I’ll need to buy milk again! Washing up was easy, it was quick to make, ingredients are easy to obtain, cheap too and it tastes great. I bought a large 1 litre milk bottle especially for this recipe and it fits perfectly. I’ve eaten it with cereal all week and thoroughly enjoyed it. It does need shaking in the morning, but so does shop bought milk. Saves on so much packaging too. Can’t fault it to be honest, thanks Alison x
Alison Andrews says
That is awesome to hear Cherry! Thanks so much for your fabulous review! 🙂
Kate says
I Concur Wholeheartedly!!
Cheryl says
Easiest recipe ever and yields super tasty results. Ended up doing the weirdo thing and using the leftover pulp as a face mask. Great for the skin:)
Alison Andrews says
Haha, that’s an awesome way to use the pulp! And so glad you enjoy the recipe. 🙂
Adrian says
Very easy to make and delicious as well! Just one question though, do you have a recipe for that bowl of what I think is oatmeal? Looks very beautiful and delicious, I’d love to prepare that for my family.
Thanks in advance!
Alison Andrews says
Hi Adrian! So glad you like the recipe! The bowl just has some granola in it with dried fruit, coconut flakes and sliced banana. We just used a store-bought version of granola so there’s no recipe, though that would be a good idea to create a recipe for that! Thanks for posting! 🙂
Jane says
Just tried it today and I’m very pleased with the result. I had previously tried a store bought one which I didn’t like because of the consistency.
I didn’t have maple syrup so I used muscovado sugar which worked nicely.
I was wondering if you ever use the strained oats for anything?
I thought maybe it could be used for a cookie recipe but I’m afraid the slimy consistency might not be great for it.
Thanks
Alison Andrews says
Hi Jane, so glad you liked it! I haven’t really used the leftover pulp for anything as it’s not a big amount that’s leftover, but you definitely can if you want to, you could add it as is to smoothies to bulk them up a bit, or you could make cookies using the pulp, I found a recipe that does exactly this:
"G" says
My wife and I have tried to make oat milk a few times and every time it comes out slimy. The last time we did it we even soaked overnight and rinsed them well. We only blended it for maybe 15-20 seconds in a vitamix.. Not sure why ours doesn’t look near as thick as your pictures do. It comes out thin and slimy. Any suggestions.
I want to be able to make oat milk that is thick and good in coffee and cereal etc.
Thank you and God bless,
Alison Andrews says
Hi G, my suggestion for this recipe is not to soak the oats at all. I tried it both ways and also found that when I soaked the oats first I couldn’t get rid of the sliminess no matter how well I rinsed the oats. I also found that you don’t need to soak them as it works just fine even without soaking, so it’s definitely my recommendation that you not soak them first, this alleviated the sliminess when I made it. You can also start with a little less water just to make sure it’s thick enough for you, you can always add more water later to thin it.
"G" says
Alison,
Thank you very much. I will give that a try!
God bless,
G
Amy says
Thank you! Just went online to buy Oatly and they’re sold out – then I found your recipe. I make almond milk all the time but hadn’t thought about oat, silly me!! Cheers!
Alison Andrews says
Hahaha, hope you love making this as much as almond milk. I must say it also took me a while to try my hand at oat milk, it isn’t the first one to come to mind when you think of diy plant milks, but it’s so easy, so why not! All the best. 🙂
Cesar says
I have read that you have to soak the oats for quite a long while, what is the purpose for this and how necessary is it? Also, I have read 4 cups is too much. Would 3 or 2 be okay? Let’s say for mixing in with a scoop of protein powder.
Alison Andrews says
I didn’t soak them at all and explained why in the post. I found 4 cups to create the best flavor but you can definitely try using less water for a richer result.
Anna Andrews says
Really simple to make and delicious as well!
Zaynap says
Hi… Can oat milk be used in baking and veggie dished. Thanks
Alison Andrews says
It thickens when heated and gets a bit gelatinous, so isn’t a great milk to be heated in any way, though you can add it to a hot drink, you just can’t heat it up before adding it to your hot drink. I haven’t used it in baking, but because of how it acts when heated I would be wary to do so.