Got milk? Making soy milk, rice milk, almond milk, oat milk, and tofu at home the traditional way, and the quick, easy, cheap, convenient, modern way
More great news. One of my pet gripes has been the excessively high cost, and often sheer lack of availability, of soy milk in most supermarkets.
Until recently it was only large, non-vegan companies selling soy milks as a complement to their dairy products. They were either taking advantage of a lack of competition, or deliberately pricing their products above their dairy products, in order to ensure that only people that were lactose intolerant, or allergic to dairy, or very keen health and vegan enthusiasts, would buy soy milk. They wanted to ensure full spectrum market domination without encouraging people to switch to soy milk.
Of course recently other competition has entered into the soy milk marketplace, and at least in Germany, it is possible to buy a liter of soy milk for not much more than the dairy equivalent.
However there is something seriously wrong here.
For you will discover that soy milk is massively cheaper to produce than dairy milk, despite that most of the ‘work’ is done by slave labor. (Cows).
The great news is that it is really easy to make soy milk at home, using the pots and pans most people already have.
It will cost you less than 20cents a liter.
The even greater news is that, for around 120 petro-ponsy-scheme-zionist central bankster (U.S) dollars, or 80 Euros, you can buy an attractive, compact, almost completely automatic, fast, and efficient, soy milk maker.
And in most of these soy milk makers you can also make any other sort of milk, from oats, brown rice, seeds, nuts, or any combination thereof.
These machines pay for themselves by virtue of the fact that they get more soy milk from the same amount of beans than you will get using traditional ‘manual’ methods.
They also pay for themselves in time savings. They require only a few minutes of your active participation, and an overall ‘processing’ time of around 20 minutes.
Whether you make the milk by hand, or use a machine, what you will enjoy are the massive cost savings. For if you make your own soy milk from soy beans, whether using the machine or more traditional methods, it will cost you a tiny fraction of what soy milk costs in the supermarket. In most cases this represents a cost saving of over one dollar per liter.
For example you will get around 16 liters from a small bag of beans costing you a dollar and sixty cents. That equates to 16 cents per liter.
And if you buy your beans in bulk, in larger bags, the cost savings will be even greater. Soy beans keep a long time without refrigeration. Just keep them in a typical kitchen cupboard or pantry.
You can buy direct from your favorite soy bean grower, to ensure you are getting the best quality, non GMO, organically grown, beans from farmers who take care of their soil, your environment, and their workers.
I wonder if one day there will be all manner of soy bean ‘roasts’ and ‘types’ like you get today with coffee beans? I have to check this out. Already ‘dry roasted’ soy beans are preferred by most people, for their flavor. I am sure a whole culture will grow up in the west around this new bean, and a whole bunch of drinks will emerge. Remember that soy beans were once used as a coffee substitute, and are today used in candy bars!
You will also save the environment, by eliminating packaging that represents a waste of materials, energy, and poses all the problems of waste disposal, including air and water contamination, and transportation to incinerators and landfill.
You will be able to tailor your milk to your own tastes and needs, making it thicker or thinner, and adding whatever flavors you wish. You will not be forced to consume artificial colors, flavors, or preservatives. You can decide exactly how sweet it will be. You can decide exactly how much salt to add.
You can experiment with your own custom blends of different ingredients. You can go ‘complete protein soy’ from the start, or mix up a complementary blend of amino acids and nutrients using different seeds, nuts, and grains.
You can ensure a complete complement of vitamins, minerals, carbohydrates, and proteins, by combining a variety of nuts, seeds, and grains.
You can then use the soy milk to make traditional tofu, or use your own custom blend to make ‘your-fu’.
This guide has a chapter devoted to making tofu at home.
The traditional Japanese method of making soy milk at home
Soak your dried soy beans overnight in water, allowing about 3 cups of water for every cup of soy beans. Ensure that the beans are covered by at least 10cm of water.
Depending on the room temperature, they will need from 8 to 12 hours to thoroughly re-hydrate to around three times their dry size.
Soaking them longer, say for 24 hours, apparently makes them even more nutritious.
Sprouting the beans adds even more vitamins and minerals.
And for the absolute in convenience for the laziest of us, some modern soy milk machines even let you avoid the soaking, and simply open up your packet of dried soy beans and pour them straight into the machine.
We will consider this factor, and the other various merits of the different soy milk machines in a moment. But for now back to the ‘hands on’, traditional approach.
When the soaked soy beans are ready, they will readily break into two halves when you rub them between your fingers and thumb, and the skins will easily rub off. However there is no need to break them into half or rub the skins off. This is just a way to test if they are ready yet.
The soaked soy beans will have taken on a more yellowish color.
Now rinse the beans in cold water.
Then place the beans in a blender. Add about one half of water per cup of beans. Blend on high for around 30 seconds.
Pour this mixture into a pot. Rinse out the blender a few times with water, pouring this water into the pot as well, to increase the fluid content a little.
Heat up the mixture on medium to high heat until it comes to a boil, stirring as it heats up. Once it reaches boiling point turn the heat down to low, and keep stirring as it simmers for around ten minutes. You can either spoon off the froth or mix it back into the mixture.
After about 10 minutes, turn off the heat.
You will now want to strain the mixture, to separate the fluid ‘milk’ from the ‘Okara’, the soy residues.
Be careful, as the mixture will be hot. You may want to wear rubber gloves.
First place some cheesecloth (use 3 to 5 layers), muslin, or any similar material over a large metal strainer, and place that strainer over a large bowl to collect the soy milk in.
When you pour the mixture into the strainer, most of the liquid will immediately strain through the cheesecloth and strainer into the bowl.
But you will now have to pick up the corners of the cheesecloth, bring them together, and then twist them around, compressing the cheesecloth, and forcing the remaining soy milk out from the ‘Okara’ and into your bowl.
The milk will have around 10% soy content.
The fresh ‘Okara’, the remaining soy grinds, can now be used in stir-fries, baking, and so on. They are very nutritious, mild in taste, and will take on the flavor of whatever you cook with them.
Okara is rich in fiber, calcium, and protein. So whatever you do, don’t just throw it away. If nothing else, then simply stir it into a soup, to thicken it and add valuable nutritional value.
You can drink the milk immediately, enjoying a vegan hot chocolate or café latte.
Otherwise leave it to cool before enjoying it.
It will keep well without refrigeration for several days.
However like most drinks, it tastes best served cold.
Don’t get fixated on Soy (Protein)
Remember that there is no need to ensure you consume all 9 essential amino acids in the same meal, or even on the same day. The modern consensus is that as long as you eat a variety of plant based foods, across a period of several days, you will provide your body with the optimal nutrition, including protein, which it requires for optimal performance.
With ‘milks’ it is just so easy to blend nuts, seeds, and grains together, so that the nutrients of each complement the other.
If you are soy intolerant, or worse, have a soy allergy, then have no fear, for there are many tasty, nutritious alternatives to soy milk.
It is so simple to ‘complement’ the protein contents of grains, nuts and seeds.
For example, simply by using rice or oat ‘milk’ to make pancakes, you are automatically combining and complementing proteins, as you are effectively adding rice and/or oats to flour.
However if you are limiting your calorific intake, and eating very little, then soy milk or soy powder added to your pancake mix will ensure you get your daily requirement of around 25g of complete protein. In fact simply drinking one liter of soy milk will provide that.
For most Westerners, it is more about reducing how much protein we eat, rather than worrying whether we are getting enough. Our problem is an excess of protein in our diets and the associated problems earlier identified with ‘protein overload’.
The only time you need to take any care is when you are strictly reducing your overall calorific intake, and not eating very much at all.
In those cases 50g of soy flour, or a liter of soy milk, will ensure you get all the protein you need.
Rice milk
Note that many ‘milk’ machines allow you to make rice milk as well. In this case the machine does not heat up.
Rice milk contains no cholesterol, but is high in anti-oxidants, and the B group of vitamins. It is also a great source of electrolytes suitable even for infants.
It is great for those people who cannot enjoy other forms of milk, due to gluten, casein, nut, soy, or lactose allergies, or want to avoid high calcium foods because of kidney stones.
It can be used as a milk alternative in recipes, and forms a basis for great smoothies, café lattes, and hot chocolates.
Note that if you want or need more calcium in your diet, broccoli and kale are great plant sources of calcium.
To improve the taste, first lightly toast the rice in a hot pan for about four minutes.
Then place the rice in a large container.
We will then soak the rice in water overnight, or for around 10 hours, using a ratio of around 1 cup of rice to four cups of water.
After the rice has thoroughly soaked in this way, we place the entire mixture of rice and the water it was soaking in, in a blender.
Blend for around two minutes on high.
Leave the mixture in the blender to give any larger particles that were not completely blended a chance to settle to the bottom of the blender.
Pour this mixture through a sieve or filter to capture the larger particles of rice.. Rinse out the blender pouring the contents through the filter.
These rice particles that have been caught can then be used as rice flour in cooking
You can add whatever sweeteners and flavors you like. Experiment with sugar alternatives like nutrient rich sorghum, for example.
Brown rice has a lower G.I, and a nuttier taste. It also contains more nutrients than white rice.
Oat milk
Note that many ‘milk’ machines let you make oat milk as well. In this case the machine does not heat up.
Oat milk is a highly nutritious alternative to soy and rice milk.
It forms the basis for great smoothies, or as a milk replacement in recipes.
Use raw oat groats.
Soak the raw oat groats overnight to neutralise / release the typical nut/grain enzyme inhibitors that can otherwise interfere with the complete digestion and nutritional benefits of many nuts and grains.
After at least around 10 hours soaking, bring the mixture to the boil and then remove the heat, leaving the groats to simmer and then cool.
Once the groats have cooled down, place the mixture in a blender with some water and salt.
‘Milk’ machines
My plan to mass produce cheap soy milk has become redundant. Yey! That much less work for Markus to have to undertake.
‘Don’t have a cow?’ Well now you don’t need one.
You’ve heard of mad cow disease? Well how about a ‘nut’ cow? Well a soy / rice / nut milk machine, to be more precise.
These machines are about the size of a typical electric hot water kettle. They are good looking, elegant, and multi-functional. You can use them to make all sorts of milks. I expect they will also make coffee! I cannot wait to try! They will be the first fully automatic ‘café latte’ machines if they do manage to pull off this trick!
These soy machines have their own in-built water heaters, grinders and very fine metal mesh filters.
They are simple enough to satisfy the most fanatical of minimalists like me. Simple to use. Simple, quick, and easy to clean. In fact the whole process may take 20 minutes or so, but it will only take a few minutes of your actual attention. Most of the time you are free to write that new novel, song, or pay your cat some attention.
You simply add your soaked (or in some cases dry) soy beans, and water, to the machine either via a ‘port’ in the top, or by opening the machine and placing the beans in the machine.
You can add different nuts, seeks, oats, rice, and so on, to produce your own special blend.
And then you can make tofu, or mofu, or yourfu, or kungfu, tailoring the milk to your own specific tastes.
For example use more soy beans, or add some sesame seeds, or almonds, or oats.
A quick overview of some of the most popular brands of ‘milk’ machines
The Soyabella soy milk maker houses the grinder inside a special fine metal mesh filter. You place the beans in the filter and close the lid. The machine then heats the water and beans to around 80 degrees celcius before grinding them. The soy (almond, rice, oat) milk then filters down through the fine metal mesh filter into the bottom of the machine. The soy bean pulp remains in the filter. You simply wait for around 20 minutes for the machine to go through a few cycles of heating and grinding, and then pour out your fresh steaming hot soy (almond, rice, oat) milk.
The Premium SoyQuick filterless soymilk maker and SoyaDirect (a U.K based company) belong to the newest generation of soy milk makers which manage to do away with a filter, making cleaning the machine just that little bit easier. They do this using a system called ‘Perfect Grind’. At the end of the process you simply pour the milk through a simple filter/strainer that comes with the machine, into your cup or milk container.
This system does away with the need to carefully match the quantity of beans to the quantity of water.
With this new design you have much more room for creativity. You are free to make your milk ‘stronger’ or ‘weaker’, in terms of soy / nut / grain / almond content. You can mix and match grains, nuts, seeds, rices, and beans and vary the relative ratio of water to beans within a given range, making it more flexible.
Most modern machines first heat up the water, and therefore the beans, to around 80 degrees Celsius before the thermostat controlled grinder/miller kicks in. This ensures that there is little or no ‘beany’ taste.
With these machines you get over 50% yield, with 4 to 10% very fine suspended matter (okara) remaining in the ‘milk’. This pulp is very fine and in no way any problem in terms of taste or drinkability. The final product contains about 4% dissolved soy solids...
Once you have poured out the milk, you can remove the Okara (pulp) for further use, then quickly and simply rinse the filter, and clean any part of the machine which came into contact with the soy milk with a cloth or cleaning pad.
Converting soy milk into delicious and nutritious home-made tofu
Fresh home-made tofu is just that much better than store-bought tofu. They do not bear comparison. It has a superior clean and delicate flavor that simply melts in your mouth.
It provides the perfect basis for delicious stir-fries, or blended up it will make the smoothest smoothies you can imagine.
It is important to note that because of the way supermarket or health-food shop soy milk is processed, it cannot be used to make tofu. It simply will not ‘curdle’.
Tofu is basically soy ‘curds’. To get the soy milk to ‘curdle’ (coagulate) you need to add a coagulant such as calcium sulphate (gypsum), traditional nigari, or simply use lemon juice.
Dissolve three to four teaspoons of whichever of these you chose, in a cup of warm water, and keep it standing by. You will add it after heating the soy milk.
The benefit of the gypsum is that it adds nutritional calcium to your tofu. The nigari is more traditional. Of the three you are most likely to already have lemon juice in your kitchen, and it will add vitamin C to your tofu.
You heat the milk to about 70 degrees Celsius. If you don’t have a thermometer, then simply bring the milk to the boil, and then remove the heat, allowing the mixture to cool for 3 minutes.
Now add half the cup of gypsum / nigari / lemon juice mix. to the soy milk, stirring it in as you add it, using a gentle, gradual stirring action, first in one direction, then the other, then back and forth, and finally in a figure of eight in one direction, and then the other. The more gradually and gently you add and mix the coagulant to the soy milk, the softer, fluffier, and silkier your final product will be.
Turn the heat back up, while continuing to stir the mixture gently. It should start separating within a few minutes.
If, after adding this second half, the liquid that separates from the tofu is still not clear, but rather milky looking, then add the second half of the gypsum / nigari / lemon juice mix.
Once the mixture starts separating into tofu and a clear liquid, turn off the heat, and cover the pot.
Leave the tofu to continue separating for another 10 to 15 minutes.
While you are leaving it to set, line a steamer pot with some cheesecloth, muslin, or other material.
Once you have separated the tofu from the clear liquid, place the mixture in a container that will allow excess liquid to drain away.
You can use tofu kits, or simply punch a few holes in the bottom of an old plastic container. Your tofu will take on whatever shape the container is.
You can buy lovely wooden tofu kits. You place your cheesecloth in the base, and then fold it over the tofu. You then place the top of the kit on top of the cheesecloth, adding a weight on top so that it presses down upon the cheesecloth, compressing it, and thus squeezing out any excess liquid, leaving only the tofu. You leave the tofu to drain and firm up for about 30 minutes.
You then turn the kit upside down over a container full of cold water. The colder the better. Allow the tofu to fall out into this container of cold water. This will ensure your tofu firms nicely.
Store the tofu in water in the fridge. Change the water each day. It will keep fresh this way for about a week.
Now you are set to experiment with tofu lasagna, puddings, brownies, quiche, scrambled tofu, soups, stews, casseroles, baked tofu, pan fried tofu, stir-fried tofu, smoothies, puddings, pies, muffins, and so on.
Experiment with other beans such as chick-peas. Chick pea tofu is a delicious alternative to soy tofu. It is a great way to add variety to your menu, and avoid ‘overdoing’ the soy.
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