Dairy & Eggs

Oat Milk

Oat milk is made by blending oats with water, often with a small amount of added oil, giving it a notably creamier mouthfeel than most other plant milks despite a similar overall weight per cup.

It performs better in coffee than most other plant milks because its natural starches and stabilizers let it froth and steam in a way closer to dairy milk, and it's less prone to curdling in hot, acidic coffee.

Oats naturally contain some starch, giving oat milk a slightly sweeter, more neutral flavor than nut-based milks even in its unsweetened form, a real flavor characteristic of the base ingredient rather than added sugar.

Modern oat milk traces back to research by Swedish food scientist Rickard Öste at Lund University in the early 1990s, work that was eventually commercialized under the Oatly brand — a specific, traceable origin unlike older plant milks such as soy or almond, which developed more gradually across different cultures over centuries.

Getting oat milk's texture right requires breaking down the oats' starch with enzymes during processing, converting some of it into natural sugars — this step is exactly why unsweetened oat milk still tastes noticeably sweeter than unsweetened almond or soy milk, without any added sweetener actually being involved.

Oat milk became the fastest-growing plant milk in US coffee shops during the early 2020s largely on the strength of its steaming and foaming performance, which baristas and chains alike found came closer to dairy milk's texture in a latte than almond or soy milk typically managed.

"Barista" and "original" oat milk cartons from the same brand often differ meaningfully in fat and stabilizer content, with the barista version formulated specifically to resist splitting in hot espresso — a distinction worth checking on the label rather than assuming any carton of oat milk performs the same way steamed into a latte.

Oats themselves are naturally gluten-free, but oat milk isn't automatically safe for someone with celiac disease or a genuine gluten sensitivity unless the product is specifically labeled gluten-free, since oats are frequently grown, harvested, or processed alongside wheat, barley, or rye, introducing cross-contamination that a standard, non-certified oat product doesn't screen out — a distinction that trips up plenty of people who assume all oat milk is inherently gluten-free simply because oats are.

Shaking or stirring a carton of oat milk before use matters more than it does for some other plant milks, since a bit of natural sediment or thickening can settle at the bottom over time, especially in a version without heavy added stabilizers.

Oat milk's rise has coincided with a broader environmental argument in its favor, since oats generally require considerably less water to grow than almonds and produce lower greenhouse gas emissions than dairy farming, factors that show up regularly in marketing and in comparisons among the various plant milks now sharing shelf space in a typical US grocery store's dairy case.