Nourishing Honey-Sweetened Horchata

Thick, creamy, and delicious, this nourishing honey-sweetened horchata is packed full of vitamins, minerals, and prebiotics! It’s a sweet, cinnamon-y favorite.

A Hispanic Favorite

If you’ve never had horchata, you’re in for a treat, my friend! Traditionally, horchata is a flavored plant-based milk originating way back in the 13-century in Valencia, Spain. While in Spain it is usually made with soaked, ground tiger nuts, here in the United States and Mexico it’s usually made with white rice.

Horchata can be served hot or cold, and can even be used as a flavor base for other recipes (see my friend Emily’s horchata ice cream). Horchata de arroz is made with rice, vanilla, and cinnamon. 

If you’re looking for more delicious healthy Mexican favorites, here are a few my family loves…

• Easy, Mild 5-Minute Salsa
• Chicken Fajitas in the Instant Pot
• Grain-Free Mexican Chocolate Cake
• Broccoli Chimichurri Sauce
• Paleo Mexican Chocolate Blender Brownies
• Frozen Mexican Hot Chocolate
• Grilled Tenderloin Tacos
• Grain-Free Chipotle-Style Burrito Bowls
• Cilantro Lime Cauliflower Rice

Nourishing Honey-Sweetened Horchata.

Most horchata recipes contain quite a bit of sugar, but I (of course) always opt for naturally sweetening my treats. So this horchata recipe is sweetened with honey, instead of cane sugar! While I opted for honey as my sweetener, I also added in a vitamin and mineral boost from raw egg yolks! Yep, you read that right. Raw. 

If you’re worried about using raw eggs in your horchata, you don’t need to worry about it. Healthy eggs are packed full of nutrition, like vitamins B6, folate, B12, A, D, E, and K, as well as calcium and iron! And believe it or not, all that nutrition is easier for your body to digest when the eggs are raw.

The trick to using raw eggs is to use the highest quality ones you can find. I use my fresh ones from my backyard hens, and if you can find pastured ones, please use those. If not, organic is fine. 

How to make horchata.

Horchata is a super simple drink to make. All you need is leftover rice, a couple real food staples like cinnamon and honey, and a blender. If you happen to have homemade rice milk on hand (or store bought) you can use that in place of the rice and water in the recipe. Just add the remaining ingredients in and blend.

I like to use jasmine rise in my horchata, it’s already got a sweetish flavor, so it pairs well with the drink. If you’re thinking, I thought this was a paleo-friendly blog, how can you be pushing rice in a recipe? listen up. The way your body handles leftover rice (as in cooked, cooled, and the used again) is different than if you eat freshly cooked rice.

Resistant Starch.

Once cooked and cooled, rice falls into the category of a resistant starch. We all know that rice is full of starch to begin with, and once eaten that starch turns to sugars in our body. An over abundance of sugars in your gut can lead to all sorts of issues. But what is resistant starch?

Resistant starch is found in certain foods that have been cooked and cooled. Legumes, grains, and potatoes can become resistant starches. This starch resists being digested in the small intestine, staying intact to become food for the good bacteria (flora) that’s found in our large intestine and thus falling into the category of prebiotics. 

If you have a rice allergy or intolerance, I would probably suggest not trying rice for your first resistant starch. Maybe try some leftover potatoes or some refried beans (makes sure the beans have been properly prepared!). But if you have no other aversions to rice, give this nourishing honey-sweetened horchata a try!

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