Soaked the soybeans for about eight hours before working with them. After soaking the beans I put some in the bullet blender (thanks to my mom!) with some water and pureed. The resulting paste was brought to boil.
I had to add more water as I was heating the soy paste because I didn't use enough when I pureed the mixture. As this mess was coming to a boil I was skimming foam and skin (like boiling milk). After boiling and briefly cooling I poured the contents into a cheesecloth bag I've got and milked me some soy!
Twist, squeeze, repeat. I had to do two batches of blending and boiling due to the size of the bullet blender and my cooking pot. After milking two rounds of soy I was left with about a cup of soy milk.
My homemade soymilk (in the background) ended up working really well! The flavor is a little odd to me, so I added a small amount of agave and vanilla extract which helped to mellow out the milk. So what do you do for breakfast when you're out of breakfast-ish food? Toss a banana, some blueberries and fresh soymilk into a blender and have yourself an awesome smoothie!
The dry pulp leftover from the milking process is called okara and I ended up with about a cup or a cup and a half (I don't measure anything). Since I still needed to cook diner I decided to fry me some okara! Heated up some olive oil and tossed in some fresh okara. Used a lid to steam it and added salt, cilantro, parsley, black pepper and vinegar as the okara cooked.
It ended up being pretty awesome! Protein! I've already got plenty of ideas of what to do with this stuff (I still have half of my soybeans and more than half of my okara). Okara seems like it could be a good thickener for some soups, a good addition to bread or fried okara would be great with some stir fried veggies! Since I can get organic soybeans for only $1.86 at my local market, I expect to see more of this on the way; I haven't even experimented with soy kifer or homemade tofu yet!
Wow, your on a roll. I'm impressed with all this. Maybe you can also make Tempeh, fermented soy beans. Don't they take forever to cook?
ReplyDeleteThanks! I'm stoked on it, I've got another soybean alternative project in the works that I'll be posting soon, should be fun.
ReplyDeleteSeems like I need to get a tempeh starter and some sort of incubator. Seems like a great idea (more nutrients and flavor), but I like being able to get two distinct results from the milking (the milk and okara). Next time I go shopping I'll ask around about tempeh starters and see what I can dig up!
mmmm i want
ReplyDeleteI bet the okara was kind of funky but really cool texture?? I can imagine milked soy beans might be sort of strange...
But their texture might also be good for making veggie patties (like instead of using tempeh or quinoa, use the okara as the base with spices etc.)
Yeah, tthe okara has a fantastic texture! I've only used it in stir fry, but it's delicious when mixed with rice.
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't really have any clumping tendencies, so you would need a strong binding agent to make veggie patties. If you didn't need the milk, I would definitely just make tempeh from the soybeans instead.