Rice Milk, the Frugal Way

Have you ever priced rice milk? Bought it, even? The price is ridiculous! You can make rice milk for much, much less and it's not even hard to do. Here's how:

1/2 cup of rice, white or brown
8 cups of water
Sweetener
Flavoring to taste. (Vanilla is good, or try almond.)

All you do is cook the living daylights out of the rice, then puree it along with the water it was cooked in, add flavorings and that's it. Really, that's all there is to it.

Don't boil it hard because the water will boil away. Simmer it with a lid on (it takes two to three hours) or cook it overnight in your crockpot, which is cheaper and easier. Keep it refrigerated just like you'd do with the expensive kind.

You can use rice milk in place of cow's milk in most recipes if you use a minimum of sweetener. I use about 4 tablespoons of white sugar for 8 cups of milk, but try brown sugar, honey, molasses or stevia. You might like those better.

If a recipe calls specifically for whole milk, add a teaspoon of butter per quart of rice milk. That's a quarter teaspoon per cup.

Easy enough?