Can You Freeze Oat Milk? Here’s All You Need To Know

Can you freeze oat milk? Yes, you can! Read on for how to preserve oat milk in the freezer for up to three months, and my top tips for freezing and defrosting.

Whilst any non-dairy milk is great for the environment compared to cows’ milk, not all non-dairy milk is equal.

I always feel that oat milk is a great sustainable choice. It’s better for the environment than many other vegan milk substitutes. Almond milk, for example, is water-intensive. Meanwhile, coconut milk has to travel a long way to get to our supermarket shelves and can involve animal abuse in its production. Oats feel like an all-round better choice.

As an oat milk aficionado – and trust me, I’ve tried all the oat milk to find the best one – something I always wondered about was what to do with any leftover milk.

I almost always finish an opened carton of oat milk. However, on the odd occasion when we are going away somewhere for a few days and can’t take the milk with us, then what to do?

With the increasing costs of food and the environmental impact of food waste, it feels wrong to pour perfectly good oat milk down the drain. To help beat food waste, instead, I looked for ways to preserve any leftover milk. And as I now know all there is to know about oat milk storage I thought I’d share the fruits of my labour with you.

Yes, You Can Freeze It!

Good news! It turns out that yes, you can freeze oat milk for up to three months. Once you’re ready to use it, you should then defrost it in your fridge overnight. The defrosted oat milk should then be used within 2 to 3 days of thawing.

A couple of key points before we begin. Firstly, never refreeze already-defrosted oat milk. And as always, make sure your milk hasn’t expired before freezing it. Here’s some top tips to check your oat milk is still safe to use so that you’re not freezing off milk.

Safety points out of the way, let’s move on to the freezing. What I’ve found is that oat milk settles in the freezing process. This means it can be a little grainy when you defrost it. However, it’s completely fine to use.

Due to the graininess, I personally would not use defrosted oat milk in tea, coffee, or cereal. When you heat up the oat milk though, the good news is you don’t notice the graininess. As a result, I’d say defrosted oat milk is best used in cooking. Alternatively, you can heat the oat milk and use it to it make a milky coffee or hot chocolate.

How to Freeze Oat Milk

I’ve been experimenting with the best way to freeze oat milk.

I have tried freezing milk in jars. What I found is that unless the recipe calls for a lot of milk then the milk just languishes in my fridge for too long. The last time I tried this method we ended up having to pour a jar of milk down the drain as nobody wanted the grainy milk in their cup of tea.

For that reason, I now freeze oat milk in an ice-cube tray. This means I have pre-portioned sizes of frozen milk on hand that I add directly to sauces. Pre-portioning the milk before freezing also means you can add it to your cooking without the need to defrost the milk beforehand. As such, it’s ice-cube trays all the way now!

I use a plastic ice cube tray because I’ve had it forever, and binning it and replacing it with a metal ice cube tray is not in any way sustainable. However, if you don’t have an ice-cube tray you can get lovely metal ones.

To free up space, once your cubes are frozen, you can pop them out into a labelled tub or bag, noting the date on which you froze the cubes.

How To Use Your Frozen Cubes

You can simply drop the frozen cubes into your cooking when the recipe calls for oat milk. Frozen cubes can also be added to smoothies. Because you’re blending the smoothie, this means you won’t detect any graininess.

I’ve also found that Oatly Barista Milk separates when it’s frozen. It’s made with rapeseed oil so the oil tends to rise to the top when you defrost it. However, giving it a good mix when you are cooking sorts that all out.

What About Freezing Soy Milk Or Any Other Type of Non-Dairy Milk?

All other types of non-dairy milk (and regular cow’s milk) can be frozen. Again, they might go grainy like oat milk, or may lose some of their texture or taste, so I’d always recommend the ice-cube tray method.