Is Oat Milk a Russian Import?
There’s nothing new about this trendy plant milk
This piece is a companion to Darra’s upcoming book, “Beyond the North Wind: Russia in Recipes and Lore,” from Ten Speed Press, on sale Feb. 4. — ed.
A recent New Yorker article described the panic that erupted when Brooklyn’s hipster coffee shops ran out of oat milk for their patrons’ coffee. “Oatly,” the journalist reported, “the small and unabashedly quirky Swedish company that invented oat milk, couldn’t keep up with demand.”
Invented oat milk? I was stunned. The Russians have been “milking” oats for over a thousand years, often as a first step in making the porridge known as kissel (kisel’). They steep oats in water to soften them before draining off the starch-rich liquid, which they leave to ferment for several hours, a process often accelerated by adding a chunk of rye bread. The “milk” can either be drunk as a beverage or heated in a barely warm oven until it sets into porridge.
Though this starchy dish is still enjoyed today, it was a mainstay of the early Slav diet. In fact, if we’re to believe the 12th-century “Tale of Bygone Years,” it was kissel that…
