Soy Milk

Making your own soy milk is easy, fast and cheap! I wish I’d started doing this years ago.

Things You Need:

-one cup of soy beans (the dried kind from the bulk aisle is fine)

-salt

-water

-sugar, vanilla or almond extract, chocolate or cocoa powder, etc (optional)

-a blender

-pot

-jar/jug/other container

Directions:

-Place your soy beans into a bowl. Cover with water and leave to soak for 8-10 hours.

-Pour the beans into a blender. Add about 3.5 cups (one litre) of water. Blend away!

-Pour the mixture through a piece of cheese cloth or a fine sieve (which is what I used) into your pot. You may choose to do this a few times, but if your sieve or cloth are fine enough, once should be all you need.

-Boil your milk uncovered for about ten minutes, stirring occasionally. Once it comes to a rolling boil, be sure to turn the heat down or it’ll boil over! (It creates a lot of foam, which I found out the hard way!) As soon as the milk starts to boil, add about 1/2 tsp salt; this will get rid of that bitter nutty taste. This is also the time to add any “extras”, such as sugar (1-2 Tbsp), vanilla (I added 2 Tbsp, but this was too much), chocolate powder, etc.

-After ten minutes, remove the milk from the heat. Let it cool completely before jarring it and putting it in the fridge. It’ll last for about three days! YUM!

Notes:

-If you want, you can crack and hull your beans prior to soaking. I tried this and it took way too long, so I stopped. Supposedly the blending process is easier later on, but I had no troubles despite not hulling the beans.

-Place that creamy leftover mixture into a jar. You can use this to make bread, yoghurt or a number of other things!

-I had to add more water to the milk when it was boiling because I tend to like my milk fairly watery. (Along the lines of skim milk.) You may need to alter this depending on how thick you like your milk.