Food Review: Almond Milk (for medieval cooking)

[hrj]

I finally got around to doing a comparative taste test on almond milks when cooking last Thursday for this weekend's event. This was purely a "drink it straight" taste test and doesn't compare the various items as used in actual dishes. The items being compared are two commercial almond milks and a simple home-made one. The biggest problem with the commercial almond milks was finding unflavored ones. Most of the groceries I frequent carry at least one variant, but it will commonly be chocolate flavored or at the very least vanilla flavored. Only the Berkeley Bowl supermarket carried plain, unflavored almond milk. Probably other "natural foods" markets would be a good bet as well.

1. Almond Breeze "Original" flavor almond non-dairy beverage from Blue Diamond

The ingredients list indicates: water, evaporated cane juice, almonds, salt, and a bunch of chemicals, vitamins, and thickening agents. 60 calories per 8 oz cup.

The viscosity was relatively thin. The taste was sweetish and slightly "toasted".

2. Pacific Natural Foods "Original" flavor almond non-dairy beverage

The ingredients list is identical to the Almond Breeze one until you get down to the specific ordering of the vitamins. 70 calories per 8 oz cup. Amusingly, the PNF brand advertises itself as "low fat" but the calories from fat are identical in each (25/cup) and the PNF is higher calorie overall. There's a lesson here about the usefulness of self-serving labeling.

The viscosity was similar to the Almond Breeze. The taste was sweetish again but without the toasted flavor -- more delicate and "flowery".

3. Home-made almond milk ... ok almond non-dairy beverage

Ingredients: water, almonds. Hard to know the calorie content since I don't know how much caloric value remains in the almond "dregs" after the milk is filtered off. My recipe would use 1/2 cup ground almonds to make a cup of milk, which my references tells me would be ca. 270 calories worth of almonds, so if you figure the calories end up half in the milk and half in the dregs, that would make it about double the commercial almond milks (which makes sense, since the home-made isn't processed to be low-fat).

Roughly following the proportions in one of Terrence Scully's books, I mixed one volume of ground blanched almonds (for some reason I can more reliably find blanched almonds in ground form than in whole untoasted form -- at least in volume rather than in the small packets in the baking section) with two volumes of warm water. Mix in a blender for a couple of minutes. Let sit for about five minutes, then mix again and strain. The first time I did this, I strained it through a cloth, but the second time I just strained it through a medium sieve. Both seem noticeably thicker in viscosity than the commercial milks, but the sieve-strained one moreso. (Thicker without being gritty.) The taste was relatively mild without any strong flavors predominating -- definitely more reminiscent of fresh raw almonds than the commercial milks.

Conclusions

Given how easy the home-made recipe is, as long as I'm able to obtain ground almonds, it makes more sense to make my own -- especially since I can make the specific volume I require rather than opening up a one quart box of it and then worrying about using it up. On the other hand, if I were aiming for a reduced calorie version of some medieval recipe, I might want to try one of the commercial versions. Probably the PNF unless I specifically thought the toasted flavor would add something.

Comments

[kareina.livejournal.com]

When you make low-cal recipes, are you doing it only for people who need to watch their fat intake, or do you have friends with issues like diabetes as well? If the latter, it may be better to go with the richer, but unsweetened, home made version.