Make Your Own Soya Bean Milk

With all the stories going round about milk, as well as store-bought products in general, we are trying to make more and more of our own food and beverages at home.  Soya bean milk is very easy, tastes better homemade and fresh, and is extremely cheap to make, too.

Here is a how-to of making soya bean milk. There are lots of others online, so take a look around the internet if these don't make sense to you.

Step 1:
Go to your local supermarket or general goods store, and buy a bag of soya beans (黃豆 "huang(2) dou(4)").  Start with 半斤 (half (ban(4)) a "jin") to see if you like making it or not.  Buy a cheesecloth. You can either buy a bag kind, or sew your own.

Beans should cost about NTD30.  You can make about 10 liters with that amount, I think.
Cheesecloth is also very cheap.  (Secret: We use an old muslin vest of my daughter's. We washed it first.)

Step 2:
Take them home and rinse and then soak some beans.  I use a cup from the rice cooker to measure the beans, which is about 200cc.  Cover them with enough water to let them soak it up until the beans double in size.  That will take 6-8 hours.

Step 3:
I pour out the water from the beans. Some people use it in the blender.  It's up to you.  Add the beans to the blender.  Add about 4 cups of water.  (Use the same cup as you used to measure the beans.)  Blend until smooth.  Keep adding water until the soya milk is about the consistency you like.  It should be a total of about 10 cups of water.

Step 4:
Strain the mixture through the cheesecloth, into a pot.  Keep the pulp for making other recipes.

Not much left!

Step 5:
Heat the mixture to boiling point, stirring so it doesn't stick to the pot.  Boil it for a good few minutes.  Add sugar or sugar syrup if desired. 

Step 6:
After the soya bean milk cools, you can store it in glass containers.  We use recycled wine bottles from Costco.  They are the ones with the wider necks.

Our fritters, made from the pulp.