Home Made Soy Milk

Someone asked me,

"Don't you gay Christians ever do anything but talk about the Bible?"

The answer is, Yes, of course. On Monday evening I made fresh sweet soy milk. The 2 minute video that inspired my activity can be found by clicking the title at the top of this post.

How to make

Home Made Soy Milk

with photos

1. Soak one cup of dry organic soybeans overnight in four cups of water.

You can buy organic soybeans at your local health food store or food co-op or online. They're about $1.89 per lb.

2. After soybeans have soaked all night, place them in the blender with enough water to cover and grate for about 20-30 seconds.

If your blender has a small container, you may have to do it a little bit at a time.

DON'T use the high setting on your blender. Use the lowest or next to lowest setting.

3. Pour the blended soybeans into a large cooking pot.

4. Add 4 cups of water for each cup of soaked soybeans.

If you started off with 1 cup of dry soybeans, you'll have about 2 1/2 cups of soaked soybeans so you'll need 10 cups of water. If you like your soy milk thicker, use only 8 cups of water.

5. Bring the soybeans and water to a boil and cook for 20-25 minutes, stirring to make sure the mixture does not scorch on the bottom of the pan. Soybeans tend to get foamy on top and boil over so don't leave while the soybeans are cooking.

I used my Grandma's blue enameled cast iron cook pot. The heavy cast iron spreads the heat around evenly so it doesn't scorch on the bottom and it doesn't boil over.



6. After cooking for 25 minutes, remove from heat and strain the soybean mixture through a one gallon straining bag.

I bought mine at Home Depot, 2 for $2.24 but if you prefer to pay three times as much, gourmet straining bags are available online or from a cooking shop at the mall.

The bag has elastic around the top so it fits nicely over a one gallon glass jar. The bags are sturdy and reusable. Just wash in warm soapy water and allow to drip dry.



The bag strains out the pulp, called okara, and leaves clean, fresh, absolutely delicious soy milk.



Okara is great for cooking. You can stir fry it in canola oil or olive oil and use it like hamburger or make a vegetarian meatloaf using the okara or add it to crock pot soup.



I had some vegetable soup cooking in the crock pot so I added a cup of fresh cooked okara to the soup. It will slow cook overnight and make a wonderful spring-time lunch.



7. If you're used to soy milk from the grocery you'll probably want to flavor yours to make it taste more like what you're used to.

I used Organic Blue Agave Nectar. Its a wonderful tasting, low glycemic index natural sweetener.

I added 4 tablespoons to a half gallon of soy milk + 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1 tablespoon of vanilla flavoring.



8. As an experiment, I recooked the okara a second time in the blue pot, with fresh water and strained it again. The soy milk was thinner but still tasty and I got another quart of soy milk for my trouble.

It looks very much like cow's milk but still tastes like soy milk. The crock pot soy milk came out darker, with a much stronger beany flavor.

Casey, my Giant Schnauzer, loves the stronger flavored soy milk so I'm saving that to pour over her food each day.

I prefer stove top soy milk to crock pot soy milk. Stove top soy milk has a lighter, more delicate flavor and tastes delicious hot, warm or cold. Use it in cooking to replace milk.

I almost bought a soy milk maker but this recipe is so easy and the soy milk tastes so great, I now have no need for an electric soy milk maker like Soyabella, SoyQuick or SoyaJoy.

But if you prefer not to cook your soybeans in a big pot on your stove, perhaps a soy milk maker is just the ticket for you. With one of the brands mentioned above, you can have fresh hot soy milk in 15-20 minutes.

You can even make soy yogurt with your home made soy milk but that's a project I'll tell you about in another post.

And that's how I spent my Monday evening. I now have 3 quarts of fresh soy milk for about an hour of my time and $.30 cents worth of organic soybeans. Amazing!

Give it a try if you're feeling adventurous and let me know how it turns out for you.