Muesli Recipe | Gluten Free, Dairy Free, Vegan

This easy homemade muesli recipe is made with just a few basic pantry ingredients, and you can use it to make a cooked porridge, overnight muesli, or as a breakfast topping.

Gluten free muesli is packed with nutrients and tastes better than any overpriced store-bought muesli can. This healthy breakfast recipe is delicious as it is, but it's versatile, too, so you can add your own extras to customize it to your family's tastes.

What is muesli?

In its most basic form, muesli is like a Swiss granola. But rather than the clumpy, stickiness of granola, muesli is typically made from raw or near-raw individual nuts, seeds, and rolled oats. It's up to you what nuts and seeds you choose to add. 

Is muesli good for you?

So, whenever I used to put a new recipe in front of my oldest child, she was gracious enough to try it. My first clue that she liked it is if she asks...”is this healthy?”

I love that she cares about health and nutrition. Unfortunately, I'm not a nutritionist, but I do want to give her the answer to the question she's really asking: “can I eat this often and not feel bad about it?”

Some recipes, like traditional chocolate cake and chocolate chip cookies, just aren't good for you and aren't meant to be. They're treats, and whether you eat them once a year or every day, you know that you're not feeding your body what it needs. And it's really o-kay.

But there are plenty of recipes that fall into the middle ground between healthy … and not. Sometimes it's a matter of what else you eat throughout the day that determines the health of a particular meal.

Other times, it's a matter of what you pair it with. Eating a salad covered in cheese, dressing, and croutons just is not going to help your overall health.

Whether you consider this muesli to be healthy also depends upon what sort of eating rules you’re trying to stick to. This muesli recipe is indeed healthy as it’s packed with healthy fats and whole grains, and it has no added sugar, refined or otherwise.

The dried apricots add natural sweetness, but you can limit those as much as you like. Same goes for the honey, which is just a serving suggestion. And this muesli is really satisfying and should keep you full for quite a while.

Why this is the best gluten free muesli recipe

Muesli has been around for over 100 years, and in that time, the basic recipe has undergone all kinds of adjustments. There are thousands of recipes out there, but I have a few reasons for thinking mine is the best:

• Naturally gluten free — So long as you choose certified gluten free oats, this DIY muesli recipe is completely free of gluten. Even popular preparation methods, like cereal and “overnight oats“-style, are gluten free.
• Vegan and dairy free too — When prepared as written, this muesli recipe is also naturally vegan and dairy free. If you want to soak it, just reach for a dairy free milk, like almond milk or coconut milk.
• Super easy to prepare — The most complicated part of this recipe (and I use that term lightly) is baking the ingredients to give them that pleasant toasted flavor. Technically, you can even skip that step, but I highly recommend that you don't.
• Endlessly customizable — We've all got our individual tastes, and this homemade muesli recipe celebrates that. Don't like sunflower seeds? Love dried fruits? Add or omit ingredients as you see fit, and I promise, the finished product will still taste amazing.
• Incredibly versatile — Breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack, dessert — is there a time of day at which you can't eat muesli? No, I don't think there is.
• Wildly affordable — Compare the price of store-bought cereal from the local grocery store versus the prices of the individual ingredients in this recipe, and you'll see that it really does pay to make your own muesli.

Muesli ingredients and substitution notes

The fresh fruit, honey, and milk at the end of the ingredients list are all optional ingredients that can replace with whatever you like, or left out entirely. You can customize this recipe by replacing or eliminating many of the ingredients below, within the guidelines listed here:

Nuts and seeds: I've grouped nuts and seeds together, even as I've kept most of the other ingredients separate from one another in toasting and storing. As long as they're all chopped into similar sizes, and are all raw and unsalted, nuts and seeds are interchangeable with one another in this recipe.

Pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds are nut-free alternatives to nuts, so feel free to use tons of those. Roasted, unsalted soybeans are also a great addition, but I'd buy them already roasted. Otherwise, you'll have to soak, dry and then roast them. That's a lot of work for one ingredient in a multi-ingredient recipe!

Coconut flakes: Unsweetened coconut flakes add a really nice depth of flavor when they're toasted, and they're really beautiful, too, when you toast them. If you want or need to replace them, you can use more oats, or more nuts and seeds.

Hemp seeds: You can replace the hemp seeds with any number of small seeds, like flax, chia or sunflower seeds. They add texture and tons of nutrition to this muesli recipe.

Oats: This recipe is naturally gluten free as long as you use certified gluten free oats, but if you're not following a gluten free diet, you can use any sort of oats you like. If you're not comfortable eating oats on a gluten free diet, or simply can't have them, you can replace them in any recipe that calls for oats.

In this recipe, if I were to replace oats, I'd likely use beaten rice, or poha. You can also replace the oats with more coconut flakes. Crisp rice cereal is also a good option if you toast it like coconut flakes. Just don't soak the muesli in milk, yogurt or water before serving it.

Dried apricots: I chose chopped, dried apricots for this recipe because I love the way they taste, and their color. They add a chewy texture, too, that balances out the other ingredients whether you soak the muesli or not.

I also really like dried cranberries infused with apple juice. You can, of course, use any other dried fruit that you like.

Adding spices: You can add another dimension to your homemade muesli recipe by adding spices. When it's cooler out, I love warmer options like cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg, plus pumpkin spice muesli for chilly fall mornings, too.

Adding sweetness: If you've got a sweet tooth, don't add granulated sugar to this homemade muesli. Instead, top it with some fresh fruit like sliced bananas or goji berries, a handful of chocolate chips, or a drizzle of honey or maple syrup.

How do you prepare muesli?

I know I'm repeating myself, but muesli really is so versatile, even in preparation. You can even melt some chocolate and combine with the muesli to make a gluten free muesli alternative to plain old cornflake cakes!

Gluten free muesli cereal

You can serve it cold, preparing a DIY muesli cereal by soaking it for about 10 minutes in milk, almond milk, or water before eating. This method softens the oats just a bit, but still gives you plenty of chew.

Homemade muesli as a topper

If you're not a fan of “cereal” or “oatmeal”, or you'd like something more substantial in the morning, you can still enjoy muesli. Try sprinkling it over smoothies and yogurt. You can even have some at lunch: Muesli is an awesome salad topper, and it tastes great over toast with avocado or a nut butter.

I typically prefer cold muesli like a breakfast cereal, but I also sometimes cook the toasted oats separately in water on the stovetop (I like a 1 cup of oats to 1 1/2 cups of water ratio) until creamy. Then, I add the other ingredients to the top when serving.

Tips for making the best homemade muesli

You really don't need too many tips to make awesome gluten free muesli. It's so quick and easy, and very difficult to get wrong. Nevertheless, here are my top tips. 

Skip the food processor

I chop my nuts and seeds with a knife rather than a food processor. You want them to remain crunchy, and a food processor has a tendency to turn nuts and seeds into dust rather quickly.

Save time and money with nut pieces

If you can find them, buy raw nut pieces rather than whole nuts. They’re less expensive, and it saves you the trouble of having to chop them!

Make muesli weekly for freshest results

Even though I find that my mixtures easily last two weeks or longer when I store the muesli ingredients in glass jars, there's no denying that it's freshest in its first week. For this reason, I set aside a little time each weekend to make my muesli oats for the coming week.

How to store DIY muesli

Typically, the individual ingredients in muesli are combined, stored, and served together.

I prefer to combine the nuts and seeds together for toasting in the oven, and then I store them together. But I keep the toasted coconut chips separate, as I do the chopped, dried fruit.

For this recipe, I toast and store the hemp seeds together with the oats. But you could just as easily toast and store them with the nuts and other seeds.

However you choose to package your individual ingredients, I find that they stay fresh for 2 to 4 weeks when you keep them in glass jars or other another airtight container at room temperature.

If you're worried about leaving your muesli mix out, you can also refrigerate the ingredients. This can easily extend the shelf life up to 3 months.

FAQs

Is muesli gluten free?

So long as you use oats that have been certified as gluten free, muesli is completely free of gluten. Make sure you also check the other products. Its better to be safe than sorry, and unless a product is processed and packed in a gluten free facility, or one that follows purity protocol, there's the risk of cross-contamination.

What's the difference between muesli and granola?

Both muesli and granola are a combination of oats, nuts, and seeds, and are traditionally eaten for breakfast. The main difference between muesli and granola, though, is that muesli is loose and largely unsweetened in its pre-served state.

Granola is typically seasoned with salt and spices. It’s made with sweeteners such as honey and maple syrup, and baked until it clumps and holds together.

Muesli is a mixture of loose, unsweetened ingredients. I don’t mix all of the ingredients until I’m ready to serve them. I have a family of 5, and everyone has their own tastes and preferences.

Keeping most of the ingredients separate allows each family member to customize their breakfast. More choices means less whining. And less whining is the key to my peace of mind. ✌️

Can you use muesli as the basis to make a granola bar?

Yes, you can use muesli as the basis for a simple granola bar recipe! Since the ingredients in granola and muesli are so similar, but muesli is the simpler of the two recipes, I’m more likely to make muesli than granola.

If I have muesli, I can toss it with some oil and sweeteners to make maple almond granola in no time. I can also sprinkle it on top of my morning yogurt.

I can also use it as the base for my no bake granola bars. Just measure out 2 cups of the toasted oats, add 1/2 cup oat flour, toasted coconut flakes, and the honey, coconut oil, brown sugar, salt, and vanilla.

You can either use the crisp rice cereal as directed in the recipe or replace it by volume with a combination of toasted nuts and seeds. Since the recipe is no-bake, most of the bulk-forming ingredients are interchangeable. For a more complete discussion of how granola bars are made, have a look at my master granola bar recipe.

Can I use quick-cooking oats instead of rolled oats in this homemade muesli recipe?

I don't recommend quick oats for this easy muesli recipe because they get mushy when you soak them. They might be okay if you're eating the muesli as a cereal, but they'll be awful if you soak them overnight.

Likewise, I don't recommend steel cut oats either — they take forever to soften, so they'll be too hard to enjoy no matter how you prepare the muesli. Rolled oats really are the best option.

How do you cook muesli?

There is no need to cook gluten free muesli, but you may want to heat Bircher muesli that's been refrigerated overnight. To do so, you heat it on the stove or in the microwave, just as you would oatmeal.

Easy Muesli Recipe [Gluten Free & Vegan]