Milking... the soyabean

This can be considered our first home 'project'... making soyabean milk.

Things that we usually take for granted back home can be downright expensive. A small cup of soyabean milk, we found, was AUD$2 at Boxhill's food court compared to S$0.80 a big packet from wet market back home. We are resigned to the fact that some things are going to be comparatively more expensive here but we are certainly trying not to be held ransom by it whenever we feel like having some 'home comforts'. Hence, "Project Soyabean".

So a bag of raw soyabeans and 10stalks of cut pandan leaves (or what the locals called screw pine leaves), wilk embarked on his mission to obtain a home-brewed soyabean milk, with my little trusty U-Like blender. I got the U-Like blender from Singapore from one of my motherhood forums' spree, with the sole purpose of pureering Avery's food and it came with an attachment for extracting soyabean milk. So there we go... all geared up to start.

So armed with a recipe printed from one of my blog links, we set off on our great quest for soyabean milk. First we soaked 300g of beans. But before that... a interesting problem. How do we tell how much is 300g of beans from a 1kg bag? Wilk suggested splitting the whole bag into 10 exact portions and then soak 3 of it. We debated about it for a while before decided that Wilk should just get a cooking weighing scale from the warehouse shop (it is like a mustafa in electronic goods) around the corner. So a weighing scale and soaked-bean night later, we were ready to make the soyabean milk.

First, the blending. The attachment was filled up to 3/4 with beans and boiling water then blended twice over, with one change of water. So far so good, till second round of beans when the motor of the blender suddenly stopped working. Apparently it had overheated and the motor automatically turns off. This happened twice and each time we had to wait 15 mins for the motor to cool down before we can resume blending. With 300g of beans, that was 4 change of beans, twice with cut pandan leaves inside.

Step two, once the beans were blended, the milk was poured through a sieve. To sieved out the powdery residue from the blended milk, we were supposed to pour it through a muslim cloth or coffee filter. Since we did not have either and couldn't find them in the Coles supermarket nearby... we used a clean baby nappy (folded in quarters) instead, thanks to a suggestion from Angela (we had dinner the other night and mentioned our intention to make soyabean milk). Worked really well and soon we had a nappy-ful of soyabean residue, and a pot full of smooth creamy soyabean milk.

Step three, cooking the milk with pandan leaves. This is relatively simple. Just boiling the milk in low heat with bunches of pandan leaves (scored and bundled) for 15-20mins then sugar is added to taste. After that, we are done. So far the 300g of beans yield about 1.5litre of soyabean milk which we painstakingly poured using a ladle into an empty 2litre juice carton which we had saved for the purpose. We also kept some unsugared portion for Avery. After all we ought to share the fruits of our labour with those we love right? All in all, that's 2 hours for 1.5litre of soyabean milk, now left cooling on our countertop, soon to be put into the fridge. And the taste... MmMmmm pretty good but i think we could perhaps hold back a little on the pandan.

Side note: We should have saved the soyabean pulp. Wilk remarked that it looked pretty 'edible' but he had already trashed it by the time i googled for it's uses. Apparently it is called okara and is pretty nutritious, used in many vegetarian dishes. There are also okara recipes online. Darn! Perhaps next time. I think we could probably add some pepper, salt.. fry it etc.. think will taste like tofu perhaps! Aiya.. wasted.

Well... there will probably be more "projects", esp now that we have a weighing scale (cant be just making soyabean milk right?). I think baking may be in order since we have a working oven. Time to look for interesting recipes online again.