Day 54

The Soymilk Adventure

A couple of nights ago I was looking through my cooking magazines trying to find something to make for dessert. I got distracted from my mission when, in my searching, I came across a recipe for homemade soy milk. It didn't take any expensive ingredients or fancy equipment, so of course I had to try it.  Yesterday I went to Whole Foods and bought 1 and 1/3 cups of dried soybeans (which are actually pretty cheap), and put them in a container to soak overnight.  Step 1: complete.  While I was at Whole Foods  I looked at the commercially produced soy milk to see if it had added sweetener.  It did.  Since my recipe did not call for any added sweetener, I looked around on the internet to see what other soy milk recipes added.  The first article I ran across was from a vegan blog.  This person had attempted to make homemade soy milk, and they didn't like the taste.  Now, in my opinion, if a vegan doesn't like something it makes me a little worried, because they have much more tolerant palates for interesting foods made out of soybeans and other healthy things in that venue.  But not to be deterred, I found another recipe that added honey and vanilla to they soy milk as it cooked, so I found what I needed.

Step 2 was to drain the soybeans and then puree them in the blender with three cups of filtered water.  I didn't know why it was necessary to use filtered water, but I figured I should follow the recipe on the first try.  The problem is that our blender can't hold three cups of filtered water plus the soybeans which had swollen to about three times their normal size overnight.  So I pureed half of the soybeans with half of the water, poured that into another container and then pureed the rest.  Step 2: Complete.

Step 3 was to boil three more cups of filtered water, and once it was boiling to add the soybean puree and boil for eight minutes, stirring continually so it wouldn't burn or boil over.  Getting the water to boil was easy, but once I added the puree it didn't seem to want to boil again.  I was worried about over-cooking it, and wondered if I should start the timer before it started boiling.  At 11:21am, the soybean puree started boiling.  At 11:21 and thirty seconds, the soybean puree boiled out of the pot.  Lovely.  Now there was soybean puree everywhere.  I got a bigger pot, dumped the puree into that and put it back on the burner to continue boiling.  I cleaned up the puree that I could, but some of it was in the burner so that had to wait.  After eight minutes, Step 3 was complete.

Step 4 was to line a colander with a cloth napkin and set it over a bowl to strain out the soy milk.  Once the mixture had cooled down, you were supposed to squeeze out the remaining liquid from the solids and voila! you have soy milk.  That part went pretty much as planned, except I needed to go somewhere so I didn't let the mixture cool down all of the way before I started squeezing out the liquid.  So, I would take a quick squeeze which would send scalding soy milk running down my hands into the bowl, then let go so my hands could cool off, then repeat the process.  It was great fun. Since I had to leave I poured the milk into a bowl and put it in the refrigerator to cool down.

Now comes the moment we've all bean (haha) waiting for.  The soybeans have been soaked, pureed, boiled, strained, and chilled.  The jury is out: how is homemade soymilk?  Well, let me tell you:

It tastes like homemade soymilk.

It's not bad, but it's also not the  most delicious thing in the world.  The main problem is that there is an earthy, beany aftertaste that's a little weird.  From what I read that seems to be a common problem in homemade soymilk.

At the end of the day,  I'm glad I did it.  It was a fun experiment, and I love trying new things even if they don't always work out.  I love how creative God is, and how He gives us the ability to create as well.  I took some beans and ended up with milk, and that's pretty awesome if you ask me.