How to Make Rice Milk (2 Ingredients)

This homemade rice milk is a super simple recipe, it helps you avoid all of the additives typically found in store bought rice milk, and works great for all of your vegan baking, cooking, and more.

This recipe can be made using either brown or white rice, and literally can be made with only 2 ingredients and in just minutes.

Whether you are dealing with a milk allergy or intolerance, or you just want a simple option on hand for a last-minute handy milk substitute, I have an answer for your troubles that you and your wallet will truly enjoy (and the environment will love as well.)

For years now, we've been making our own rice milk and other dairy-free milk alternatives. Our oldest was diagnosed with a life-threatening allergy to dairy before he was even one year old, and my husband is lactose intolerant, so having a milk substitute on hand has been a constant need in our home. While we mostly made homemade coconut milk now to reduce carbs, homemade rice milk was a mainstay for us for a very long time.

Rice is an easily digestible grain, so making rice milk a fantastic choice for someone who is struggling with a digestive sensitivity or upset, plus rice is gluten-free and fairly non-allergenic, so rice milk works well for almost any special diet.

How I Discovered How to Make DIY Rice Milk

This discovery came one day, years ago, while shopping at a health food store, way before dairy-free milk substitutes were in vogue. While looking at the pricey options in the “milk substitute aisle”, I noticed that the only ingredients listed on the boxes were grain, water, and occasionally sweetener and flavoring.

There just had to be a way to make this myself and save a lot of money.

So I went home, got out my blender, and did just that.

Why Make Homemade Rice Milk?

Control Over Ingredients

Here is an ingredient list from a store bought rice milk:

 Filtered Water, Organic Whole Grain Brown Rice, Organic Brown Rice Syrup, Organic Expeller Pressed Canola and/or Organic Expeller Pressed High Oleic Safflower Oil, Tricalcium Phosphate, Sea Salt, Organic Vanilla Flavor, Natural Flavor, Carrageenan, Vitamin A Palmitate, Vitamin D2, Vitamin B12.

Now, it's nice that they are using filtered water and organic rice and rice syrup and oils and flavoring, but I would rather avoid the natural flavors, carrageenan, and the synthetic vitamins. And ideally I'd rather sweeten my dairy-free milk with stevia, if at all.

Protect the Environment

By making your own rice milk, you are avoiding not only the added waste of the cartons, tetra-paks or bottles, but also the gas needed for additional trips to the store.

Save money

Homemade rice milk is incredibly inexpensive to make—just pennies per batch compared to store-bought versions.

Ways to Use Rice Milk

• Drink it straight
• Use in hot drinks like coffee, tea, or this coffee substitute
• For cooking as a non-dairy base for soups, like this Creamy Root Vegetable Soup
• As a base for vegan ice cream (like this Vegan Mint Chocolate Chip, Chocolate Almond Chip Ice Cream, etc.)
• For baking, like in this Grain-free Coffee Cake

Recipe Tips

• Rice Amount: Use more or less rice, depending on what you would like the consistency of the final product to be. Standard rice milk is thinner than full fat cow's milk, but it's of course your choice what consistency desire.
• Water: It's crucial that you use filtered water for this recipe. My post on how to make your tap water safe goes into more details about tap water contamination concerns.
• Time Saving Tip: Prepare extra rice ahead of time and portion it out in 1 cup increments in small food-safe plastic bags and store in the freezer for future rice milk making. For this purpose, I love using Twixit Clips (any kind of clip will work, but these clips are simply amazing. They last a very long time, have a lifetime guarantee and are so much easier to use than those pesky twist-ties! Simply thaw out the rice whenever you need rice milk. Bonus time saver, if you have a Vitamix or other high speed blender, it can handle the rice frozen! Simply pop the frozen rice into the blender with the filtered water and blend.
• Flavored Milk: Add flavorings like chocolate, strawberry, or coconut–the sky's the limit! Think of all the variations you could make.
• Buy a Vitamix: If you've been thinking about a Vitamix and someone in your family has an allergy to dairy, you won't believe how much time and money this machine will save you. And clean up is a breeze! There are other high speed blenders, but the Vitamix is my hands down favorite.
• Quick Beverage Cooling Tip: Make ice cubes out of this Homemade Rice Milk to increase longevity, or to have on hand for putting into hot cereals, hot coffee, hot tea, hot chocolate (or this coffee substitute) to cool them off more quickly than regular rice milk would do.

More DIY Pantry Staples

Here are some more pantry staples you can easily make yourself

• Homemade Powdered Sugar
• Homemade Chocolate Chips
• Easiest Homemade Coconut Milk
• Homemade Chili Powder
• Homemade Taco Seasoning

I'm sure you'll appreciate how this Homemade Rice Milk helps stretch your dairy-free and healthy eating budget!