Rice Milk

My son can have rice milk periodically, so today I'm making up a batch. Lundberg rice, so it's as gluten free as I can get it. I'm using a recipe from the Vegan Reader. It's worked well in the past, and I like the simplicity of the recipe.

Isn't it so pretty and white?

Rice Milk
Ingredients:
1 cup uncooked brown rice (she uses long grain, I'm trying short grain today)
8 cups water
1 teaspoon salt (optional)

Directions:
1. Wash rice.
2. Bring 8 cups of water to a boil in a big pot, over high heat. Dump in the rice.
3. Cover and lower the heat until it's simmering. Cook for 3 hours.
4. This will end up looking like soupy, sludgy broth or gruel. That's what you want. Add the salt now if you want any.
5. You'll now make the rice milk in batches. Fill a blender with half plain water, half rice sludgy porridge from the pot. Blend that sucker until really smooth. Strain twice through a mesh strainer, or once through cheese cloth. She recommends using a mason jar to store, which worked well for us.
6. Now repeat #5 until you've used up all your rice milk porridge.

The gal who came up with this recipe mentions that this rice milk is thicker than rice milk bought at a store, and that's been my experience, too. It's super thick, so you can thin it out with added water, if you like the thinner texture.

Additions: (also courtesy of the original recipe)
Oil - 2 Tb. per batch of milk, supposed to make it creamier. I never have been sure if the recipe creator meant a batch as in one blenderful or a batch as in the whole pot, but we just did about 4 Tb for the whole pot. We used olive oil. Today we're going to try coconut oil and see how that works, maybe do 2 Tbs. per blenderful.

Sweetener - She uses maple syrup. 4 Tbs. per batch (same question: what's a batch?). I think we're going to use agave syrup today, to use ours up. Not sure how much, as we just add to taste after it's in someone's cup.

Nuts - she suggests adding in some nuts during the blending stage, if desired. Sounds good, actually! We might try that!

NOTES:
3/17/13 - Re: other grain milks. We have tried this recipe with quinoa and amaranth, as well, and it works fairly well. You have to alter the water/grain ratios a bit, and the time may be a little different, but the principle is the same and works just fine. I haven't perfected this because we stopped eating these grains before I did, but I wanted to make sure to mention that it most definitely works with other grains. :-)

LOW HISTAMINE DIET - The rice, salt, and olive oil seem to be universally accepted on the various low histamine diets I've seen. Sweeteners are less of a sure thing. Some allow pasteurized honey, some allow sugar. I have not seen any allowing or disallowing agave syrup, but as corn syrup is allowed on some, I imagine agave syrup might be okay on some, as well.