Fresh Soya Milk
We’ve been binging buzzfeed tasty food & cooking videos on youtube over this latest lockdown. From Worth It, to Eating Your Feed and about to eat. It’s been oddly amusing and relaxing – just watching a big group of people together having fun cooking, eating and travelling! You should check it out.
So in one of the episodes, they travel to Taiwan and head to a typical Taiwan breakfast spot. Naturally, they get fresh soya bean milk with their meal and the revelation was “wow this is how soya milk is supposed to taste!” So this kind of resonated with me, because I’ve had a weird relationship with soya milk.
Growing up, I drank regular dairy but my brother was allergic and had to have non-dairy which really just meant soya milk in those days. Now there’s a whole aisle dedicated to this in almost any supermarket in town, with oat, hazelnut, almond, etc. At that time, we would get the standard fortune brand traditional soya milk which tasted very much like what we made today. As a kid, I definitely didn’t appreciate it and god forbid it pollute my coco pops. Full disclaimer, I like to soak my cereal in the milk until it was all soggy, then strain and eat the cereal. I lived for the bowl of “chocolate milk” that remained at the end!
By the time I got to the US for college, I had grown somewhat allergic to dairy and tried Silk soya milk for the first time. I thought the vanilla flavoured stuff was the best, bearing barely any resemblance to the real stuff. You could drink a big glass by itself, use if for oats or cereal… I guess it really just had so many other flavours covering up the real soya taste. I’m really happy that either my taste matured (haha) or rather I’ve just been more adventurous with food, so now that I’m back in Asia and have tried several fresh soya milks from stalls in Taiwan / Singapore I really love it!
So we can definitely buy commercial options here that taste similar (i.e. not Silk) to the homemade kind, but I would say the greatest difference is 3 ingredients (non GMO organic soya beans, water and sugar) for the homemade kind vs up to 10 in the commercial cartons. The joys of home made – you know exactly what goes in.
There’s been negative news around soya bean products (soya milk, tofu, etc.) for estrogen-mimicking and feminising effects in men but I think this is where everything in moderation comes in. I wouldn’t go taking soy isoflavone supplements, or protein powders / bars made with textured vegetable protein and soy protein isolate, but a nice glass of fresh soya milk every couple of days won’t do you any harm. In fact, it is good for you and has the highest protein content compared to other plant milks, along with many other vitamins and nutrients.
Not going to lie, it was pretty time consuming but definitely worth it. Especially after it was chilled, it had such a nice flavour and mouth feel. That’s also why our recipe makes 4 litres and not just 1 or 2! So go get your non-GMO organic soya beans and get cracking!
Apparently the next thing we’re going to try is Timpano alla “Big Night”. Watch this space!
Fresh Soya Milk
Equipment
- 2 large pots
- Cheesecloth
- Sieve
Ingredients
- 1 kg soya beans
- 4-5 litres water
- 1 cup sugar or to taste
Instructions
Prep
- Rinse the soybeans well
- Soak for 8 hours or overnight
The main event
- Appreciate how the soybeans changed shape and drain off the soaking water
- With the soybeans in a big pot, add 12 cups of water. Use a hand blender and blend for 5 – 10 minutes until you get a smooth slurry (see video below!)
- Make sure you don't burn out your blender, let it rest if need be. We literally put it in the fridge for 10 minutes!
- Line the sieve with your cheesecloth and place over another large pot. Pour about 1 – 2 cups of the soya bean slurry into the cheesecloth. Squeeze well to get all the liquid into the other pot. Reserve what remains in the cheesecloth in a big bowl for later. Keep doing this until you are done with all the soya bean slurry.
- Add another 6 cups of water to the bowl with the remains, stir well and go through the same process as above but this time you're done with what's left in the cheesecloth, just throw it out.
- Now place the empty pot (which you made your soya bean slurry in) on the stove. You are going to heat the residue in the pot until it browns. Kind of like brown butter – it adds a nice flavour to your final product. You'll know its done when it's brown and smells a bit like popcorn!
- So when you're happy with the browning, pour all the sieved liquid over the browned bits and mix well. Bring this pot to a boil, mixing often and watching continuously because it may very suddenly boil over and is terrible to clean off the stove. Consider yourself warned!
- Once it boils, take it off the heat and re-sieve it through the cheesecloth into the other pot you set aside. This will get rid of any clumps and make sure you get a nice smooth consistency.
- You are going to bring this just to the boil again (watch closely!) and add sugar. We added about 3/4 cup of white sugar to the 4 liters but you can definitely adjust accordingly. that was just our preference!
