My Soymilk Brings all the Boys to the Yard

Okay, not really. No boys. No yard. I live in the city.

It's still tasty, though.

ANYWAY.

It's been a while since I last wrote an entry! The last time I posted was almost three weeks ago! During that hiatus, I spent two weeks in Yunnan, China, traveling in a tour group with my family, which means trying out lots of different foods and having a lot of fun. Expect a long post of Yunnan foods in the coming week, but for now, as promised, a step-by-step tutorial on how to make soymilk in your home.

Let me warn you, though: this takes quite a bit of time, and if you're doing it alone, it can be a bit painful if you're making big batches of it. I'm talking about making soymilk from scratch, with soybeans, and without the aid of a soymilk-making machine. This is all done by hand--no fancy machines.

But, if you have the time and energy, I highly suggest you consider making this homemade, ORGANIC drink! It's quite labor-intensive, but worth it. You don't have to go to some fancy-schmancy Whole Foods or Trader Joe's or any other bougie organics-loving expensive supermarket to get your organic fix. This is REAL organic for you. This is how we do. It's:

1) Cheap! (less than a dollar to make several gallons of soymilk!)
2) ORGANIC, for all you healthy organic-loving kids! (you know exactly what goes into it! no preservatives or additives!)
3) TASTY! (It's thick and fresh. Imagine fresh-squeezed orange juice, but with milky. AND, you can control how much sugar you put into it, so the sweetness level will be perfect for each individual!)

So, let's go. Ingredients first.
-a ton of dried soybeans. You can buy these at your local Asian supermarket. They're beige/tan colored and dried.
-a ton of sugar
-water, of course
-a cheesecloth, or any type of semipermeable cloth for straining
-a POT

Now, onto instructions, with pictures:

1) Soak your soybeans overnight in water. The soybeans will soak up the water and grow in size, and end up looking like this.
















2) I'm not good with measurements, so I'll just say that you fill your blender with this much soybeans and this much water. If I were to guesstimate, I'd say 1:3 soybean to water ratio. Usually, you want to add more water if you want your soymilk to be more watery; or less water if you want it to be really thick. But it tastes better when it's more diluted, I think. So yes, eyeball it.




















3) Liquefy! Liquefy! Liquefy! Blend for several minutes until you can't see bits of soymilk floating around. Once you turn off the blender, you'll get a mixture which looks something like milk with a layer of foam on top. Just like this.














4) Get ready your cheesecloth! And pour your milk into the cheesecloth but remember to have your pot under your cheesecloth to collect the milk!















5) Oh, look! All that yummy milk inside the cheesecloth!















6) Start squeezing! Squeeze until you can can't squeeze anymore milk out!















7) Okay, once you finish squeezing, you'll have soymilk in your pot, and in your bag you'll be left with the soy hash, and it'll look something like this. You can use it again. Put this hash back into the blender, and add about twice the amount of water, and repeat the above steps. Generally, after the first squeezing/straining, you can use the hash one more time to get more milk out of it, but I wouldn't recommend using it a third time because then it just gets too diluted. After blending/squeezing the hash for the second time, you can put aside the hash. SAVE IT. I'll tell you what to do with it later.















8) Okay, so after all that blending and squeezing and re-blending and re-squeezing, and after you've used up all your soybeans, you'll have a pot (or two or three, depending on how much soybean you bought) of soymilk. There'll be a thick layer of foam on top, and you need to take a spoon and scoop it off the top and trash it.














9) No more pics from here on out, because now it's all descriptive, no pictures necessary. You take your pot of soymilk and cook it on high until it comes to a boil. AFTER the soymilk starts boiling, add your desired amount of sugar. A word of advice: more is better. You might think you're putting too much, but believe me, it takes a LOT of sugar to make your milk sweet. And also, never put in sugar before your milk starts boiling because the sugar will sink to the bottom of the pot and burn, and you'll end up with a burned pot of milk--not so tasty.

Believe me, this is MUCH the TASTIES. Usually, there's a thin layer of film that forms over your cooked soymilk, and it's really delicious and hopefully you're lucky enough to be the one to get to eat it. This soymilk is best either REALLY hot or REALLY chilled.

So, like I said before, it's

Cheap.
Organic.
Tasty.

Oh! And the hash that's left over after all the straining can be used to make soy green onion flour PANCAKES. I haven't figured out a great recipe yet, but I'm trying it out tomorrow, and as soon as I figure out a decent way of cooking it, I'll post it. So, yes, we shall not waste any bit of the soy. This is totally efficient and sustainable cooking.

Much better than Vitasoy. And that's saying a lot, because I really like Vitasoy.*

Anyway, till next time,

Peace, love, and twice-baked brownies!

*Only the Chinese version, though. The white box with the blue "Wei ta nai" lettering. None of that American Vitasoy trash for me.