Cashew milk
The easiest plant milk to make — no nut-milk bag, no straining, no waste. Cashews blend completely into water, so every bit of the nut ends up in the glass. The trick to keeping cost down: use broken-piece grades, not whole kernels.
Ingredients
Makes 1 litre
- •1 cup (140 g) W450 or LWP cashew pieces
- •4 cups (1 litre) filtered water
- •Pinch of salt
- •Optional: 1 pitted date or 1 tsp maple syrup (sweetener)
- •Optional: 1/4 tsp vanilla extract
Method
- 1 Soak (optional). For the smoothest result, soak cashews in hot water 15 minutes or cold water 4 hours. High-power blenders can skip this.
- 2 Drain. Drain and rinse the soaked cashews.
- 3 Blend. Blend cashews with 4 cups fresh water, salt, and optional sweetener/vanilla on high for 60-90 seconds until completely smooth.
- 4 Store. No straining needed — cashews blend fully. Store in a sealed bottle in the fridge up to 4 days. Shake before use.
Ratios: how creamy do you want it?
- 1:4 (1 cup cashews : 4 cups water) — rich, barista-grade, foams for coffee
- 1:5 — everyday drinking milk
- 1:3 — cashew cream for cooking and desserts
Which cashews for cashew milk?
Use W450 small wholes or, cheaper still, LWP large white pieces. Because the milk is fully blended, kernel appearance is irrelevant — broken pieces deliver identical flavour and texture at roughly a 30% discount to premium wholes. This is exactly why commercial cashew-milk brands buy piece grades. See the W450 page for the dairy-alternative economics.
Making cashew milk commercially?
Cashew-based dairy alternatives are the fastest-growing use of piece-grade cashews. If you're formulating a product, send an RFQ for LWP/SWP bulk pricing.