From the department of Saving Money By Making Things From Scratch — the same department that campaigned for homemade hummus a couple of months ago — comes this public service announcement: preparing homemade oat milk is very easy and very cheap.

I don’t drink milk myself — oat or otherwise — but I use oat milk as an ingredient regularly, in this vanilla oat milk tapioca pudding or in this Swiss chard gratin, but also to make pastry cream for strawberry tartlets, or to whip up a batch of crêpes.

If you want to make homemade oat milk, there are several ways to go about it. You can start from rolled oats, from oat flour, or from oat groats, i.e. the dehulled grain of the plant. I like to use the latter (available from natural food stores) as they are the least processed of the three, and give the best results flavor- and texture-wise.

How to prepare homemade oat milk

All you need to do then is soak the oats overnight, cook them (or not, if you choose to make raw oat milk), blitz them with water and a little salt in a blender or food processor, and then strain.

From the department of Saving Money By Making Things From Scratch comes this public service announcement: making your own oat milk is very easy and very cheap.

Oat milk made from oat groats has a very pleasant texture, smooth and milky, with a richer mouthfeel than most non-dairy milks.

I will note that the raw version has a distinctive flavor that I would describe as grassy, and a bit of a bite, which you may or may not like. I personally wouldn’t drink it straight up (then again I don’t drink milk) but I use it in preparations that call for boiling or simmering the milk, which takes the edge off. The cooked version has a much milder flavor, one I very much enjoy, and it’s the one I use for crêpes, for instance.

The bonus byproduct of homemade oat milk is the oat pulp that remains in the sieve after you’ve strained the milk; this is sometimes referred to as okara by analogy with the soy milk making process. It is quite nutritious, so it would be foolish to toss it: if you’ve cooked the oats, you can eat it as porridge if you’re into that sort of thing, but if you haven’t or you aren’t, you can fold it into cake or muffin batters, or add it to bread dough, as I do.

Just to drive home my point about the money one saves by doing this: in my organic store, I can buy a package of 500 grams (17.6 ounces) of oat groats for 1.65€ ($2.45). This amount allows me to make 10 liters (10 quarts) of oat milk, which ends up costing 0.16€ ($0.24) per liter (if you cook the oats, a few cents should be added to account for the energy needed to run the stove for 40 minutes). By comparison, a carton of oat milk sold at the same organic store costs about 2€ ($3) per liter, in other words twelve times more.

Factor in the environmental cost of packaging and transporting the oat milk (which is mostly water) rather than the dried grain, and then transporting and recycling the carton (so much the better if you can buy oat groats in bulk; I can’t), and you have a pretty strong incentive to make your own.

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Of all the kitchen inconveniences the cook has to live with, the one that generates the highest number of defensive strategies is no doubt the peeling and chopping of onions, and the associated teargas effect.

The reason why it makes you cry is explained in detail here, and if you like to read about enzymes and syn-propanethial-S-oxide, as do I, it is worth a read.

But to put it more simply, chopping onions causes the release of an irritant gas in the air, which, upon reaching your eyes, triggers a blinking and tearing reflex designed to wash it away. Yet another illustration, albeit an annoying one, of what a nifty machine the ol’ human body is.

Such an unusual tip could not go untested, so I soon tried it, using the butt end of a loaf of pain au levain and feeling both experimental and silly, but I am happy and amazed to report it worked perfectly.

Not all onions are created equal (the fresher the onion, the less you cry) and not all cooks are as sensitive, but this phenomenon explains the volume of tips and tricks floating about — some of them amusingly contradictory — designed to either hinder the release of said gas, or prevent it from reaching the eyes.

Some people rinse the onions in cold water after peeling, or chop them underwater. Some recommend keeping onions in the fridge, or plopping them in the freezer for a few minutes before chopping. Some chop from the stem end down, others from the root end up. Some recommend breathing through the nose, others only through the mouth, while others still hold a sip of water in their mouth, and try not to laugh and spit it out.

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Garden sorrel (Rumex acetosa) is commonly cultivated in French vegetable patches, and the season is just beginning. It is a sturdy, easy-to-grow leafy plant that comes back year after year, and belongs to the same botanical family as rhubarb and buckwheat, which is always fun to know.

I think of it as being halfway between a green and an herb: its flavor is notably tangy and sour, and sorrel recipes have you eat it raw or gently cooked, but in both cases it is best served in combination with other ingredients, so its pungency won’t overwhelm.

Well used, it is a delight that can really lift a dish, especially in conjunction with a sweet or fatty element.

But the operative phrase here is “well used” and I thought I would turn to you via twitter to hear about your favorite sorrel recipes using the fresh stuff, as I did last year for sage recipes.

Many thanks to all who chimed in; here’s the list of sorrel recipes I compiled, for your use and enjoyment.

(Note: in French, sorrel is oseille and it’s a classic slang word for money, in use since the late nineteenth century. Woody Allen’s 1969 movie Take The Money And Run was released in France under the title “Prends l’oseille et tire-toi.”)

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Those of you who subscribe to my newsletter already know that I worked for a little while last month at Bob’s Kitchen, a (very good) vegetarian lunch restaurant and juice bar in the 3rd arrondissement.

The team had been hired to provide the food during a film festival that was held at Beaubourg, so they needed a few more hands on deck, and I seized this opportunity to gain a little pro cooking experience, to catch a behind-the-scenes glimpse at how such a restaurant works, and (perk of perks) to have lunch there every day for the duration of my employ.

I was extraordinarily happy with the experience, which left me with a new callus on my right index finger from chopping so many vegetables, a bunch of new friends, and a newly acquired dexterity at tying a scarf turban-style on my hair so none would fall into the signature “veggie stew.”

Also: water kefir grains.

What’s water kefir?

I was already familiar with milk kefir, a fermented milk beverage that is greatly popular in Central and Eastern Europe, and which I adore.

However, I had yet to be introduced to water kefir (also known as tibi or tibicos, and kéfir de fruits in French), a water-based fermented drink that is lightly effervescent, sweet and sour, and particularly refreshing.

The team at Bob’s Kitchen made regular batches of it to offer on the drinks menu, and this gave me a chance to taste (and fall under the spell of) it.

The key ingredient in the making of water kefir is a small quantity of water kefir grains, sometimes called Japanese water crystals. These bouncy and translucent pebbles are home to a culture of yeasts and friendly bacteria that thrive and multiply in sugared water: these symbiotic microorganisms essentially “digest” the sugar in the water, producing alcohol*, lactic acid and carbon dioxide, which results in a probiotic (and therefore health-promoting), delicious drink.

Marc, the co-founder of Bob’s Kitchen, offered to give me some of the grains to make my own kefir, and I could not have accepted with more enthusiasm. I figure one cannot have too many microorganisms proliferating in one’s kitchen, as long as they’re the friendly kind.

How to make water kefir

I follow the general instructions my coworker Anna gave me, but in researching other “recipes” online, I’ve noticed the method, and the proportions of grains to water to sugar vary to some extent from one source to the next, so the overall process is fairly forgiving.

But the idea is always this: you combine the kefir grains with sugar, filtered water, an organic lemon (or some other citrus, for acidity), dried fruits (for sugar and flavor; these must also be organic), and possibly spices, and let this mixture ferment at room temperature for a day or two before filtering, bottling, and starting over with a new batch.

It really is very simple and low-commitment, and you can experiment with different kinds of citrus and dried fruits (though lemon and fig are traditional), as well as spices, or try adding fresh fruit and herbs to the mix, too. I hear fresh cherries or strawberries give the kefir a rosy hue.

We have been drinking a glass every day at breakfast, and occasionally another one later in the day, especially when I get home on my bike and the uphill ride has made me thirsty, but I’m seeing the distinct possibility of using it in cocktails.

Unlike a natural starter for bread, it’s not possible to create your own kefir grains from scratch at home, so you have to obtain them from someone else. Traditionally, you would get them from a friend or relative or neighbor who would give them to you for free, but nowadays you can order them online in exchange for a small fee to cover shipping and handling (which is only fair). You can also check your local classifieds, or ask around — at your local health food store, for instance — as someone may know someone who can provide them.

* The resulting drink is therefore very faintly alcoholic, usually less than 1% by volume. Many sources indicate that it is fine for children or pregnant women to drink in moderation, but naturally you should decide for yourself.

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