Back in January, I watched a video about Japanese method of making soy milk. I really wanted to make it, but never got to do it until now, and I have just enjoyed my very first homemade soy milk with fritters made from the pulp.

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Pulp or Okara as they called it, is not a waste, or necessarily go into compost bin. It’s definitely can be used for cooking as an ingredient.

1   Soy milk

I used 250ml of dry beans, which turned into 500ml after soaking overnight, and ended up with just little over 1 liter of soy milk. Here are the steps, which are virtually the same as shown in the video:

  1. Soak soybeans overnight

  2. Drain the beans

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    Soaked beans, 500ml, were twice as big as when they were dry

  3. Blend with water of triple volume of the soaked beans

  4. Pour the blended soybean milk into pot

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    Foamy already, this was just poured, heat wasn’t on yet

  5. Bring to a boil

    Make sure you watch it, don’t even think about peel your eyes off for a second, or it would end up like this:

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    I was still at stove, but using scissor for a few seconds, then I heard the noise and it was already too late.

  6. Turn the heat off when the foam begins to overflow, stir occasionally

  7. Wait for 10-15 minutes, then bring it to a simmer

  8. Simmer for 10-15 minutes, it shouldn’t overflow, stir occasionally

  9. Sift it with a fine mesh sieve, and press with a spoon

  10. Sift again

You will have the soy milk and pulp. You can add sugar if you want to. Try not to, pure soy milk might taste bland, but that’s just because you are too get used to massive amount of sugar. Try to taste the soy flavor.

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There are recipes using muslin or cheese cloth, but you don’t have to, though using sieve takes a longer time to process. Also when to pass through cloth or sieve is different, the other videos all seems to do so right after blending.

2   Pulp fritter

  1. Mix equal part of pulp and wheat flour
  2. Lightly knead it into a ball
  3. Shape to your liking
  4. Fry until golden brown
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I tried to use pure pulp at first for a quick test, but it fell apart when I tried to flip it after a minute, maybe I should wait longer. But I didn’t, so I took it out and mixed with flour, it then held the shape perfectly.

You could put salt, pepper, onion, green onion, sweet corn kernels, whatever you like to the fritter. But try a plain one first, you will be amazed that the taste of soybean. If you are not, then you 99% are whom eating French fries with salt and/or ketchup, and probably always eating fried foods with dips.

I didn’t blend them for very long, only one minute or less. There were still a few nearly intact, although mostly were quite fine, but they provided really tender bites in these fritters.