Sprouted Soy Milk

(pictured: sprouted soymilk and chocolate, chocolate chip cookies)

Before my husband and I started dinking almond milk, sprouted soymilk was our non-dairy milk of choice. When I discovered how easy and quick it was to make almond milk I switched from soymilk overnight. Over the weekend I was thinking about soymilk and I realized it had been so long since I had that I didn’t remember what it tasted like. I knew that meant I needed to sprout some soybeans and dust off my recipe.

Once we gave up our daily morning coffee there really wasn’t a compelling reason to have soymilk in the house. Almond milk makes a great non-dairy milk everywhere, except in coffee. For some unknown reason I think soymilk is better in coffee than almond milk. Now that the weather has turned cold I found myself craving coffee. I decided to make a batch of soymilk and freeze it in ½ cup containers so I could make coffee without needing to run to the store for soymilk.

Okay, why make your own soymilk? Have you read the ingredient list on the soymilk package? Every brand I have seen, even the organic ones, contain things I really don’t want to consume. Why does everyone need to add sugar to soymilk? It tastes fine unsweetened. When I want sweetened soy I will add a little agave of include a date in the mixture when it is being processed.

Never heard of sprouted soymilk you say. I haven’t seen it for sale either. However, if it makes sense to sprout other beans and seeds to maximize their nutrition doesn’t it stand to reason that sprouted soybeans are also higher in nutrition? Sprouting the soybeans doesn’t change the taste or texture of the soymilk. I started adding a little oatmeal to my soymilk after seeing Bryanna’s recipe, where she added it. She is right; a little oatmeal makes the milk much more rich and thick. Here is what I did.

Sprouted Soymilk
Makes 4 cups

Ingredients:

1 cup soybeans, dry
3 cups of water to cover
water to rinse the beans
5 ½ cups water to make milk
2 tablespoons oatmeal, dry

Directions:

Cover the dry soybeans with 3 cups of water and allow to stand overnight. Then drain and rinse and drain the beans and allow to stand on your counter, rinsing and draining the beans at least once and preferably more often each day for two days.

After two days little sprouts will have formed. Now place the sprouted beans in a big bowl of water and get your hands into the bowl and use a kneading motion to rub the beans together. As you do this, clear skins will be removed from the beans. Skim these skins from the water. Continue rubbing the beans together until no more skins are removed. Now you are ready to make the milk.

If you have a soymilk maker place the beans, water and oatmeal in the maker and turn it on. When the maker is finished strain the milk using the strainer provided with the maker, add a pinch of salt (if necessary) and refrigerate. I use a SoyQuick 930P that my hubby bought me last year for Christmas. It is a nice machine that is quiet and easy to clean. If you make a lot of soymilk it is a good investment.

If you don’t have a soymilk maker you can use your blender. Add half the beans, water and oatmeal to the blender and process until the beans are ground. Strain the milk through a fine wire mesh strainer lined with a couple of layers of cheesecloth. Process the second half of the beans, water and oats like the first batch. Taste for seasoning and add a pinch of salt if necessary and refrigerate.

Why do you remove the bean hulls? You can leave the hulls on but the soymilk will taste more like beans if you do. While it is a pain to remove the hulls you get better tasting milk so I do it.

Nutritional Information:

I use the nutritional stats for unsweetened Silk soymilk when I am calculating my recipes. Those are found here.

Comments:

The addition of the oatmeal makes the milk more rich and creamy and is definitely a requirement in my opinion. Sometimes I add the pinch of salt, and sometimes I don’t. It all depends on my mood. When I know I will be using it all the milk in a smoothie or with oatmeal I will go ahead and add a date (pit removed) to the soymilk maker to sweeten the milk.

I save the leftover okara (the strainer soybean) in the freezer to use in veggie burgers, and to put in miso soup. It also works well to turn in okara hummus, and I have added it to pesto to make a thicker sauce that will coat pasta. If you search okara in Google you will also find that other people use okara in muffins. My favorite use for okara is in veggie burgers, but it is a very mild tasting ingredient that has the texture of thick hummus.

It is important to clean everything that came into contact with the ground soybeans rather quickly. As the soybeans dry they will be hard to remove. I make certain to clean the soymilk maker as soon as I have all the milk in the strainer.

Unrelated note:

Happy belated birthday John! I hope you and Sue had a great dinner out tonight.

I have been a little unfocused today in the food arena. My plans to make seitan went out the window earlier today. Tomorrow I plan to make at least one new version of seitan cutlet and get that posted. Dinner tonight is also still a big question mark. Good thing the hubby won’t be home for a couple of hours. With a little luck I will be back later today with dinner from tonight. I hope you are all having a great day today.