The Hindu recently published a full-page article about the horrors of the dairy industry. A friend of mine who was very moved by it tried to go off dairy. The satisfaction of the 'curd rice' at the end of a meal made her go back on her vegan vow. Here's a wonderful alternative that we've been using for many months in our largely vegan home! It is much healthier and less expensive than cow's milk curd. Try it!
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| 1. Soak one cup of peanuts for 7-8 hours |
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| 2. Remove the water (which would have turned pinkish brown). Rinse it once again in fresh water. |
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| 3. Add a cup of water to the soaked peanuts and put it in the mixie jar. |
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| 4. Blend it well for a few minutes. |
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| 5. Voila! You get rich creamy peanut milk. |
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| 6. Place a clean unbleached and uncoloured muslin cloth (dhoti cloth is ideal) on a vessel and pour out the milk with the peanut paste. |
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7. Strain the milk by squeezing it out.
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| 9. Boil the milk. |
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| 10. Once the milk cools down to warm temperature, squeeze half a lemon and add 4-5 green chilli stalks to it. (They are rich in the bacteria we need to make the yoghurt). Leave it undisturbed for about 7-8 hours (depending on the weather and temperature outside.) For vegans who aren't purists, you can add a tsp of good quality cow's milk curd to it the first time. From the second time onwards, you can use the peanut curd culture from the first batch. Over time, either the culture gets better and better, or you acquire better and better taste for peanut curd! :) |
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| 11. You can repeat the procedure a third time and get another cup of milk, which will not be as creamy. Add some cardamom and jaggery and drink it. Use it like you'd use milk in any other recipe. For example, payasam. |
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| 12. What remains after three rounds of milk extraction is this! Throw it into your compost pile. |
9 comments:
Awesome post! Thanks Sangeetha. Will try this out. Disha is the only one who likes curd rice in our home and cannot do without it. This will surely help.
Hi Sangeetha,
Great post, is it same with coconut milk?
Muthu
Chetna, Hope Disha likes it! Isha does.
Muthu, I have tried it with coconut milk and other nuts as well. Somehow the consistency is not as good as with peanuts. If you try out some recipe and it works well, do let me know. And the effort involved with peanuts is much less than with coconuts, no? We use coconut milk in other preparations like to mix with porridge, to soak poha, etc.
I am interested to know replacements for Cheese, Butter and Ghee too
Muthu, you will find a lot of recipes for dairy alternatives here! http://sharan-india.org/vegan-recipes/dairy-meat-alternatives/
Sangi, shared this on G+. Thanks.
HI Sangeetha, m a vegetarian and slowly transitioning to a vegan diet. hav stopped consuming milk, ghee n butter; but still craving for the curd - peanut curd sounds interesting.will try it out. Btw m a feeding mother,so concerns about nutrition to myself and my toddler are worrying me if i want to go fully vegan. Would be nice if you can guide me on tat - would be even better if u could do a separate post on your journey to a vegan diet.
Hello Sangeetha,
i am trying to give up dairy products because of health issues. Thank you for sharing knowledge, I will try out your recipe today.
To get really creamy curd, adding 2.5 cups of water to 1 cup of peanuts (measured before soakng) helps.
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