Creamy, vegan milk made at home: you can prepare your own rice milk just with two ingredients + water! Read on to find the step-by-step instructions how to make Rice Milk from cooked or uncooked rice.
Benefits of homemade rice milk
Rice milk is a great option when you need a vegan milk for drinking or for dessert. It is a good dairy-free alternative for people with lactose intolerance.
It has a bit less calories than the whole cow milk and contains mainly carbohydrates but it almost lacks nutrients.
In any case homemade rice milk is very inexpensive, especially if compared to the store bought rice milk.
Another great benefit is that it is the most allergy friendly vegan milk, together with the coconut milk which contains more fats. And while I don’t recommend rice milk to be your main beverage for a long period of time due to low nutrition content and arsenic content concerns, it is a great option when you need a quick and cheap vegan milk alternative.
I started making rice milk mainly because I needed a non-dairy-milk for vegan recipes. I realized that it is easy to make and there was no point of buying a whole carton of expensive vegan milk if I could make it myself.
What ingredients you need
You need only three ingredients: long grain rice (white or brown), water and dates or another sweetener of choice.
The sweetener is needed as without it your milk would not have almost any taste. Dairy milk has a mild sweet taste thanks to the lactose, which is lacking in rice. Adding a natural sweetener makes this homemade beverage much nicer.
Preparation summary
There are two ways to make rice milk: with cooked rice and with raw rice.
- Rice milk from cooked rice: What you need to do is cook the rice, drain it and let it cool. Then combine it with water and dates and blend until smooth. Pass the resulting liquid through a fine mesh sieve or a cheesecloth for a better texture. Refrigerate.
- Rice milk from uncooked rice: You need to soak the rice in hot water for several hours. Drain it and blend together with dates and fresh water until fine crumbs. Pass through a very fine mesh sieve or a clean fine piece of fabric. Refrigerate.
Using Raw Rice vs. Cooked Rice
What are the pros and cons of the two methods?
Both are relatively easy, being the milk from cooked rice slightly more time consuming. It takes some effort to cook the rice and then it is slightly more complicated to pass it through a sieve, as the mixture will resemble puree. However the milk made of cooked rice is creamier, denser and tastier in my view, so I personally prefer it.
The milk made of raw rice is not as thick and the fine rice powder tends to precipitate easily so you need to shake the bottle every time before drinking it.
In addition you will get a bit more milk from the cooked rice than from the same quantity of raw rice. Last but not least, cooking the rice and then draining it reduces the levels of arsenic in rice more than when it is just soaked and rinsed.
In case you didn’t know: arsenic is a mineral, naturally contained in rice, which is toxic in high quantities. This is especially concerning when there is a lot of rice in your diet. Basmati rice is the kind that contains the lowest arsenic levels, so that is one of the reasons to be preferred for rice milk.
Below is the easy recipe divided in two parts (for raw and cooked method). I hope you like it and you enjoy delicious rice milk!
If you want to try other plant milk alternatives, here is how to prepare Homemade Oat Milk
And below you will find some nice recipes using vegan milk:
- Chocolate Chia Pudding Trifle
- Perfect Vegan Hot Chocolate
- Coconut Cream Pie
- The Best Vegan Chocolate Cake
📝 Recipe
How to make Rice Milk from raw rice
Equipment
- Food Processor
Ingredients
- ¾ cup/ 150 g basmati rice, (see notes)
- 4 cups/ 1 l water
- 2-3 medjool dates
Instructions
- Rinse very well the rice and soak it in 2 cups of hot water for 2-4 hours.
- Drain the water and transfer the rice to a food processor. Add dates and 2 cups of cold or warm water. Close very well the food processor with a lid and process for about 3 minutes, until the rice and the dates become fine crumbs. No need to process until powder.
- Pass the liquid through a fine mesh sieve or a clean thin cloth (not a cheese cloth)
Notes
- You can use other natural sweetener instead of dates.
- Store the milk for 4-5 days in the fridge. Shake well before consuming.
- You can make the rice milk with any kind of rice. Basmati rice however is the best choice as it contains less arsenic than other kinds.
📝 Recipe
How to make Rice Milk from cooked rice
Equipment
- Food Processor
Ingredients
- ¾ cup/ 150 g basmati rice
- 5 ½ cups/ 1,3 l water
- 2-3 medjool dates
Instructions
- Rinse very well the rice and cook it in two cups (500 ml) water. The rice does not need to be very soft, it is ok if it’s still slightly hard.
- Drain the water from the rice and let it cool for 30 minutes.
- Transfer the rice to a food processor. Add dates and 3,5 cups water. Process again for 15-20 seconds until smooth. The mixture should resemble a very thin puree.
- Pass it through a fine mesh sieve or a cheese cloth. It will take some time to do this but the texture of the milk will be much better.
Notes
- Instead of dates you can use maple syrup, stevia or other natural sweetener of choice.
- Store 4-5 days in the fridge.
Teresa says
Can I freeze or can this rice milk?
Daniela Lambova says
Hi Teresa, I am not familiar with canning homemade plant milk but you can freeze it. The only issue is that after defrosting it might change a bit its texture, e.g. to start separating.
Peggy says
Did you mean to say 5-Cups of water in the cooked rice recipe? I don't understand what you mean by 5,5-Cups of water? Help. 🙂
Daniela Lambova says
Hi Peggy, it is 5 and 1/2 cups of water (5 cups and a half). Sorry that it wasn't clear!
Kels says
I used brown rice because it's what we had and after a little trial and error it came out to a very nice rice milk. I used the raw method and added honey.
Thank you for sharing this easy recipe.
Daniela Lambova says
Hi Kels, thank you for sharing your experience! I am glad that you liked the recipe.
Jessica says
Very helpful especially since my hours are cut and I need milk for several cooking recipes I need. I’m eager to try it out.
Daniela Lambova says
Thank you so much, Jessica, I hope you like it!
John says
Most recipes demand 4 cups of milk to be blended with the rice (raw recipe), here you mention only 2. Any specific reason?
Daniela says
Hi John, I am not sure I understand your question. The raw recipe for rice milk is made with 4 cups of water: 2 hot for soaking and afterwards 2 more cold are added. The resulting milk from this quantity after passing it through a sieve is about 2 cups.
Kat says
Loved it!
Daniela says
I am so glad, Kat! Thanks for the feedback
Andrew Wya says
My name is Andrew- l tried the Rice milk process- so good so nice.l enjoyed it so much!! I added Honey as sweetener.
Daniela says
Hi Andrew, I am so glad you liked the recipe! Thank you for sharing!
Dmitry says
Thank you for the recipe. I made 1 liter of raw rice milk, but then I filtered it out and didn't want to throw away the leftover rice grain. So I just added a lot of water and boiled it while constantly stirring it, added some sugar and then put it into the food processor. As a result, I made about 1.5-2 liters of cooked rice milk as well. It also turned out to be really tasty to add to it some cow milk.
Daniela says
Thank you for your feedback, Dmitry! That's a great idea for using the leftovers, thanks for sharing it!