Under the Choko Tree By Nevin Sweeney

Soy Milk - you know you want to make it!

As a high protein food source that you don’t have to hunt, catch, kill, gut, butcher, clean or do generally unpleasant things to before you can eat it, soy beans have fascinated me for a long time. The problem is that they don’t taste all that crash hot by themselves and you generally have to spend some time and effort to disguise the taste. Hence after having tried a few things that were generally regarded as unacceptable by the family, I let the idea rest.

However, we are lovers of Asian food and I have done some reading over the years about how to go about it another way, processing the soy beans into an entirely new form of food – that bland white stuff called variously tofu Doufu or bean curd, depending on where you come from. The process is interesting and, dare I say it, fun to carry out and you get high protein munchies at the end of it. What could be better?

Well alright, lots of things but if you are interested in living more sustainably and/or self sufficiently it is worth while trying the process out to see if home made tofu is for you. There are a number of steps to the process and at each step the result is edible in its own right so you get exposure to all sorts of oriental goodies, although some are more acceptable to my western palate that others. The two basic steps are turning soy beans into soy milk then turning the soy milk into tofu. This article concerns itself with the first process, a second article will be written about completing the tofu production process.

First grow or buy you soy beans. Seeing as Australia produces large amounts of soy beans they are neither expensive nor hard to find, being available in most supermarkets, or health food shops if you want the organically grown variety. I use the supermarket variety and find them OK. I have tried to grow my own but I must admit to not much success thus far. Look for beans labelled as organic to avoid using genetically modified (GM) product.

 1 cup of soy beans rehydrated Vs Dried

The dried beans that you buy look like small yellow ball bearings and are about  as appetising. They need to be rehydrated so the first step is to soak them overnight in plenty of water, they expand quite a bit so allow plenty of room in the container. The following process is based on starting with one cup of dried beans.
Once the beans have absorbed the water and gained their more bean-like appearance, they must be ground up so that the milk can be extracted. The traditional Japanese way to do it is to use a stone grain grinder, but I imagine that a Moulinex style hand food processor would work just as well. I use a blender – so much for tradition!

Soy beans in blender prior to whizzing

All you do is dump in the rehydrated beans, add two cups of water and blend until you get a fine white sludge. This sludge looks and smells like a soy bean flavoured smoothee and I can tell you it tastes as good as it sounds. In Japanese it is called go and may be fried up with garlic and onion in a bit of butter and salt and pepper to make a party dip, put into soups or scrambled eggs, used in bread mixes or even made into vegetarian patties with breadcrumbs and diced vegetables then deep fried. So even if for some reason you get stuck at this stage it is not a total loss.

A soy bean smoothie!

Assuming you want to go on to the next stage, boil six cops of water in a large pot, say about four litre capacity then pour in the soy bean thickshake and stir over a moderate heat until the froth starts to rise. Then is starts to rise if fills the pot very quickly, so keep stirring and reduce the heat to low and simmer for 10 minutes. The cooking of soy products is very important because there is a substance in the soy bean called a trypsin inhibitor which funnily enough, inhibits trypsin, and enzyme essential for the digestion of protein. This substance is deactivated by cooking so to get the full value out of your soy bean products they must be cooked – but enough of the theory!

Simmering soy bean sludge Batman!

Now that you have simmered your soy sludge, you need to filter out the gritty bits of ground up soy bean. The way i do it is to put an old (but clean) pillowcase into a large colander or strainer and then put the whole assembly over a (roughly two litre) pot.  Pour in the sludge. The soy milk flows through and the soy grits (called okara in Japanese) are left in the cloth. To get most of the soy mold out it is traditional to use a press, but not having one I fold the pillowcase over and twist it around to squeeze out the milk. The problem is that the stuff is still damn HOT, so wear a pair of thick rubber gloves and have some cold water on hand to take the sting out. Then pour another two cups of water over the okara and squeeze it out again to get the maximum amount of milk out. Make sure the cloth you use is well washed before hand, first time I tried this trick I got soy milk full of blue fluff.

Soy bean sludge and pillowcase in the collander

You know have two products – soy milk and okara. The soy milk can be consumed as is, converted into tofu right away or put in the fridge for later. In a closed container it will last a week or more in the fridge. The okara looks like breadcrumbs and according to the books has a “subtle” flavour which to my gross western palate translates as “bland”. I must admit the first time I tried it I didn’t think much of it, but the taste and texture (very nutty) tends to grow on you over time. If after giving it a chance you still don’t think much of it, it makes a high protein poultry food that our chooks love.

Fine Okara grits

Assuming you don’t want to use it as just chook food, what else is it good for? It can be incorporated into vegetable soups, used as a thickener in onion, mushroom or curry sauces (when ground finely – whizz for a bit longer in the blender!) put into scrambled eggs or bound with eggs, made into patties and fried – nice but a bit gritty. It can also be made into balls with garlic, onion, ginger and bound with corn flour, then deep fried and dipped in sweet and sour sauce. When added to flour products such as bread, pancakes or muffins it increases their protein content and adds nuttiness to the texture. So you see that it can be a versatile food in itself and being a byproduct of the process it is virtually free, so don’t let the chooks have all the fun!

Soy milk - You know you want some!

The Next Step – TOFU!

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