When I talk about my nut-milk maker at parties, rhapsodize about it to friends, or evangelize for it on first dates, I can feel people judging me, desperate for me to change the subject to anything besides nut milk. Clearly, I’m obsessed, and nut milk has pretty much become my entire personality. But my beloved Almond Cow is incredible enough for me to risk alienating myself in social settings.
I’ve had my Almond Cow since 2019. I had to cut out dairy for health reasons and found that over-the-counter nut milks weren’t cutting it. Store-bought almond milk was thin, watery, and tasteless. Store-bought oat milk was tolerable — until I found out that most brands (cough, Oatly) cut the product with inflammatory seed oils to give a creamy mouthfeel. The few times I tried to make homemade nut milk the old-fashioned way — with a blender — were disheartening. Straining multiple cups of thick liquid through a cheesecloth is messy and chaotic. What am I, an Amish pioneer woman? No thank you. I am a modern, lazy woman looking for solutions.
Desperate, I Googled “nut-milk makers,” found the Almond Cow, and purchased it without reading any reviews. At the time, it was $195 (today, the price has gone up to $245). It was expensive, but something in my bones told me I needed it. At first glance, the Almond Cow is aesthetically underwhelming, dare I say genuinely unpleasant to look at. It sort of looks like an ugly Mandalorian helmet. Unlike my pastel Our Place cookware that I proudly display, when my Almond Cow isn’t in use, I keep it locked away in a cabinet like an ugly, milk-making child I’m embarrassed by.
Using the Almond Cow couldn’t be simpler. Essentially, the machine comprises a stainless-steel pitcher that houses an immersion blender in a stainless-steel filter basket. You fill the body of the pitcher with water to a fill line, place the ingredients of your choice in the filter basket, secure the basket to the immersion blender, insert the top directly into the water-filled pitcher, and press a tiny button on the top. That’s it! Once started, the machine goes into a cycle of three 15-second rounds of grinding. The sound — and I can’t stress this enough — is genuinely horrible. It’s shockingly loud and downright violent. After the cycle is complete, a blinking light goes solid, signifying the process is done. And out comes the creamiest, freshest, most unbelievably delicious nut milk of your life.
After you finish busting a nut (what I call making nut milk), you’re left with a ton of finely ground nut pulp. The website has recipes for your leftover pulp; I tried making pulp cookies, but they were gross. But I like to imagine that one day, I’ll be living my best pulp-salvaging life, where I’ll use it to make loaves or baked goods, or compost it in my perfect vegetable garden — but for now, I unceremoniously and violently dump the pulp down my garbage disposal. But I am keeping an open mind for 2024 re: nut pulps and personal growth.
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