This post is part of our Easy, Waste-Busting Food and Drink Recipes resource.
This post shares recipes for:
- Tea and Infusions
- Dairy and non-dairy milks
- Ginger beer (coming soon…)
Tea and Infusions
Tea can be tricky in a zero waste lifestyle. Generally, we avoid teabags because most brands have plastic in them. The ones that don’t (like, Scarborough Fair and Red Seal) tend to have plastic wrap around the boxes. We prefer loose leaf where possible. Sometimes you can buy loose leaf tea in bulk stores. Check our Regional Zero Waste Shopping Guides to see if this option is available near you.
Overall, we’ve found that making our own tea blends out of spices, fruit and/or foraged leaves is the best way to go (and much cheaper). Check out some of our ideas below.
Chai Masala Mix
This recipe below is taken from The Hathi Cooks’ grandma’s recipe. We adore it. Here it is:
Ingredients
- 160 g. whole black peppercorn (or finely ground, same weight. Volume: 1 cup + 7 Tbsp)
- 125 g. whole dried ginger or ginger powder (Volume: 1 cup + 8 Tbsp)
- 50 g. cinnamon sticks (or finely ground, same weight. Volume: 1/4 cup + 2 1/2 Tbsp)
- 50 g. whole cardamom seeds (or finely ground, same weight. Volume: 1/2 cup + 1/2 Tbsp)
- 5 g. whole cloves (or finely ground, same weight. Volume: 1 Tbsp)
- 5 g. nutmeg (or finely ground, same weight. Volume: 1 Tbsp)
Instructions
Put all the ingredients in a spice grinder and grind until it becomes a fine powder. Store it in an airtight container in a cupboard.
How do we use the mix? We just put a 1/4 of a teaspoon in the bottom of a cup, and then fill the cup with boiling water. If you want you can add a teaspoon of honey. We love the drink just like this, but if you want to make it into an actual chai, check out the link to the original recipe, which explains how to do this (and then see our suggestions for low-waste milk options below).
NB:
- The recipe makes a HUGE quantity of chai masala. We would usually make this with a fifth of the quantities listed (though, note, you need the kind of scales that drug dealers would use to measure out the spice quantities accurately at such small weights, so we do guesstimate a bit).
- We keep this mix low-waste by getting the spices from a bulk store (whether Bin Inn or somewhere else that sells spices without packaging).
- If you find the drink too spicy, you can reduce the amount of peppercorns you put in, but we really like the punchy kick this blend has!
Foraging for teas and/or making it up as you go
We spend a lot of time foraging for leaves and flowers that we can use to make teas, and also experimenting with standard pantry items like fruit and dried fruit. With the leaves and flowers, you can pluck and use them fresh, or you can dry them, blend them and store in an airtight container. So try some mixtures out! BUT make sure that if you are foraging you know what it is that you are using because some plants are poisonous – DON’T experiment (sorry for shouting). Some great ingredients for infusions are:
- Citrus tree leaves (orange/lemon)
- Culinary lavender
- Dried fruits
- Ginger and turmeric root
- Kawakawa (please note that kawakawa is a mild blood thinner, so don’t use it if you are on Warfarin)
- Lemon balm
- Lemon Verbena
- Mint leaves
- Rose petals
- Slices of fruit and berries
Dairy and Non-Dairy Milks
We are often asked how we manage to drink milk (dairy, vegan or otherwise), without packaging. In this post, we discuss both.
Dairy Milk
Broadly speaking, if you want dairy milk, short of getting and milking your own cow, the only zero waste option is to find a farm near you that uses a vending machine system (where you bring reusable glass bottles to refill), or a milk company that operates a bottle swap system. Check out our Regional Zero Waste Shopping Guides to see if there are such operations near you. If you don’t have a vending machine or bottle swap system near you and you want to reduce your waste footprint, you could consider reducing your dairy milk intake (say, getting one less bottle a week) by using non-dairy milk for some things instead, if you can bear it (for example, putting non-dairy milk in your cereals or baking, both of which are much less noticeably different than non-dairy milk in tea). If this doesn’t sound too horrendous, then read on to see how to get non-dairy milk without packaging…
Non-dairy Milk
People often ask us how we manage to avoid Tetrapaks for non-dairy milks because most non-dairy milks come in this type of packaging and it sure is wasteful (Tetrapaks are a composite product, made of multiple layers of different materials, so it’s a hassle to recycle. For this reason, in most parts of NZ, Tetrapaks are landfill only – not a great outcome, especially if you are skipping the dairy milk for environmental reasons)! Coconut milk often comes in steel cans that, while effectively recycled, are mostly not recycled in NZ, but shipped overseas. Furthermore, the cans are lined with plastic on the inside, as well as the plastic labels and adhesive on the outside.
We avoid all this packaging by making the milks ourselves! You’ll be surprised by how easy, and how cheap this is (seriously). Not only that, but by making it yourself, you skip all the preservatives, additives, salts, sugars, and oils that often get added to packaged non-dairy milk.
Our go-to milk of choice is oat milk because it’s basically free it’s so cheap to make (and because it’s easy to find NZ-grown oats), but you can make other milks too (sunflower seed milk is a favourite of ours for hot drinks as oat milk doesn’t work as well in this context). Soy milk is not hard to make, but the trick is finding unpackaged soy beans (particularly NZ-grown ones – we don’t want soy beans that we can’t trace the origin of) – the only place we’ve seen them in a bulk bin is in Nelson.
Here are the ones we can share with you (scroll down to find the one you want):
- Oat Milk
- Sunflower Seed Milk
- Nut Milk
- Coconut Milk
- Rice Milk
- Soy Milk
1. Oat milk
Ingredients
- 1 part oats (jumbo rolled oats or steel cut – if using steel cut oats, soak them for 2-4 hours in cold water and then drain before using)
- 3-4 parts of water
Instructions
- Put oats in a blender with one part water (or use a bowl and decent stick blender).
- Blend for a few seconds.
- Add the remaining water, one part at a time, blending for a few seconds in between.
- Strain the mixture through a sieve into a bowl/jug/bottle in order to separate the milk from the chunks of mashed up oats.
NB:
- Homemade oat milk can be a bit ‘slimey’. Steel cut oats produce a less slimey texture, and so you may prefer to use these over whole oats.
- How much water you add depends on how rich/thick you want the milk to be. So go by your tastes when deciding how much water to put in.
- We reserve the left over oat mush that you collect in the sieve and use it for other things. For example, you can chuck it into your morning porridge or cereal, use it in baking as an oil/fat substitute, or mix it with herbs/spices/salt/grated veggies and then bake in the oven to make slapdash oatcakes!
2. Sunflower Seed Milk
This is our go-to milk of choice for hot drinks because it produces a lovely, creamy milk just like a nut milk, but sunflower seeds are way cheaper than nuts, so it’s much more affordable 😀 Also sunflower seeds don’t need to soak as long as nuts to blend effectively.
Ingredients
- 1 part sunflower seeds
- 3-4 parts water
Instructions
- Soak the seeds for 3 hours or so in a bowl of luke warm water.
- Drain the seeds from the soaking water.
- Put seeds in a blender with one part of water (or use a bowl and decent stick blender).
- Blend for a few seconds.
- Add the remaining water, one part at a time, blending for a few seconds in between.
- Strain the mixture through a sieve (if you don’t mind a few bits coming through into the milk) or else a cheese cloth/piece of muslin into a bowl/jug/bottle in order to separate the milk from the chunks of mashed up seeds.
NB: You can reserve the mashed up seeds left in your sieve/cheesecloth and use it as an oil substitute in baking, mix with a bit of flour/herbs/spices/salt and bake to make slapdash crackers, or chuck it in with homemade pestos/dips.
3. Nut milk
Ingredients
- 1 part your nuts of choice (i.e. almond or cashews).
- 3-4 parts water
Instructions
- Soak the nuts overnight in a bowl of cold water.
- Drain the nuts from the soaking water.
- Put nuts in a blender with one part water (or use a bowl and decent stick blender).
- Blend for a few seconds.
- Add the remaining water, one part at a time, blending for a few seconds in between.
- Strain the mixture through a cheese cloth/piece of muslin into a bowl/jug/bottle in order to separate the milk from the chunks of mashed up nuts.
NB: You can reserve the mashed up nuts left in your cheesecloth and use as an oil substitute in baking, mix with a bit of flour/herbs/spices/salt and bake to make slapdash crackers, or chuck it in with homemade pestos/dips.
4. Coconut milk
Ingredients
- 1 part shredded/threaded coconut
- 2 parts boiling water
Instructions
- Boil the water in a kettle.
- Put the coconut in a heat resistant bowl.
- Pour the boiling water onto the coconut and then leave the mixture to sit for 15 minutes.
- Pour the mixture into a blender/nutribullet (or use a bowl and decent stick blender) and blend it up.
- Strain the liquid through a sieve. The liquid is your milk.
NB: You can retain the coconut mush left behind in your sieve for various things, like adding it to breakfast/baking. Make sure to keep the mush in the fridge. After about 48 hours it will start to ferment – at this point it’s nice with some lemon juice, garlic, salt and pepper as an almost cheesy-like topping or side dish. Be careful though, if you leave the mush too much longer it will start to smell and taste like foot.
5. Rice milk
Ingredients
- 1 part rice (either cooked or raw)
- 4 parts water
- Optional: 4 dates (or other sweetener) for sweetness
Instructions
- If you are using non-cooked rice, you will need to soak the rice in very hot water (not boiling) for a couple of hours OR in room temperature water overnight. After the soaking period is over, drain the rice in a sieve.
- Place the rice (whether cooked or not cooked) and your sweetener (if using) into a blender with one part water (or use a bowl and decent stick blender). Blend it for a bit, and then add the rest of the water one part at a time, blending in between.
- Strain the liquid through a thin tea towel (the gaps in a cheesecloth/muslin are too big for rice milk) into a bowl. This liquid is your rice milk!
6. Soy Milk
As noted above, we’ve only made soy milk in parts of the country where we can find NZ-grown soy beans unpackaged (not many places…). We use this great, no-fuss recipe by Mary’s Test Kitchen.
Ingredients
- 1 part soy beans
- 5 parts water
Instructions
- Soak the soy beans in water for at least 24 hours (if you forget to do this and need soy milk, stat, then bring non-soaked beans to boil in a pot and cook in the boiling water for a couple of minutes. Then leave until cool enough to touch, and then proceed with the rest of the recipe).
- Drain the water.
- Put soybeans in a blender with one part water (or use a bowl and decent stick blender).
- Blend for a few seconds.
- Add the remaining water, one part at a time, blending for a few seconds in between.
- Strain the mixture through a cheesecloth into a pot big enough to take all the liquid.
- Reserve the leftover mush (okara – yes, it has name!) for other recipes (for example, you can use it in place of tofu for recipes that call for tofu to substitute things like cheese, such as vegan lasagne or vegan cheesecake etc.)
- Heat the milk up in the pot on a stove at medium-high temperature for about 10 minutes, stirring consistently (the point of heating the milk up is to remove the “beany” flavour).
- Let cool. Bottle and store in fridge.
6 Comments
Kia ora kōrua!
About how long do these oat and sunflower seed milks last in the fridge?
(Also, do you have any technique hints on straining through cloth? I always seem to make a big production of it 😀 )
Thanks v much
Melissa
Hiya Melissa! If you put the milks straight into the fridge after making and keep in the fridge (don’t leave out on the bench) you should be able to get about 4 days out of the sunflower and a week out of the oats (sunflower milk seems to go off faster). We find that sunflower blends (i.e. 50% sunflower, 50% nut or coconut or something) keep a bit longer too. The critical thing is that it goes in the fridge and stays there. Given the shelf life, we don’t make massive batches, just what we need. You can make big batches and then freeze some. However, I feel like defrosting milk is more effort/time consuming than just making up batches as and when you need.
What do you mean on techniques or hints for straining through cloth? We just pour it over the cloth with the edges of the cloth pulled up so as not to make a spill mess and squeeze. You can use a bag rather than a sheet of cloth if it makes it easier to avoid spills. Bags are expensive though compared to bits of muslin!
Oh cool thanks. Yeah maybe I’m just unco; I seem to struggle to get the stuff to stay inside the cloth long enough to gather up the edges so I can squeeze it out 😀 Hey also? Any preferences on type of blender (do you mean blender as opposed to food processor, for example? as in, more sort of jug shaped than flat fat cylinder shaped?)? Or rather, are there any shapes/sorts that you’ve noticed don’t work, like they don’t grab the tiny wee oats and bits well enough or similar?
Perhaps if you have the cloth over a bowl that isn’t a really wide bowl and you sort of have the cloth slack so that it creates a bit of a dip, it’ll be easier to coordinate 😉
For mylks we would use a blender (as opposed to a food processor, which doesn’t get the chunks fine enough). The type of blender you use is flexi though. You can use a jug-shaped bench top blender, a nutribullet style blender, but you can also use a stick blender!
Thanks heaps will give it a go. Goodbye Tetrapaks! 🙂
We soak sunflower seeds overnight and in that time the seed begins to sprout and carbs turn to sugars (called malting) if the sprouting is stopped at that time the sugar remains in the seed and you have a very sweet seed. We sprinkle that on our daily lunchtime salad and it is very tasty and nutty. Leftover malted seeds when put in the fridge will continue to sprout and gradually become less sweet