Soy Milk - The Best Non-Dairy Milk?

Why?

I'm not the worlds most committed carnivore, but I'll confess I've never really got on with non-dairy milks. I'd rather drink my tea black than put plant extracts in it to make it 'white'. But in an ever more complicated world in which you'll find yourself catering to vegans, cohabitants doing 'veganuary', vegetarians who don't take dairy, and people who just don't get on with cows milk its a good idea to have a non-dairy solution up your sleeve. And I don't know about you but I'd rather make it than buy it.

I've occasionally experimented with such milks and I think the best is soy milk. Almond milk is absurdly expensive to make and rather fails over sustainability, oat milk is vile, and I while I think coconut milk is delicious I think it's also too strongly flavoured for most of the uses you put milk to. Soy milk hits the sweet spot for usefulness, taste, and cost. So here's how I make it.

First, catch your beans

I would suggest that you'll do better buying soya beans from an ethnic shop than from a major retailer or 'wholefoods' shop. You'll probably have more options that way, clearer labelling, and a better price. You can usually get a bag like this for under a couple of quid. The great thing about dried beans is that they last pretty much forever, if you keep them in a tightly stoppered container in the larder. So don't worry about getting a few extra beans in, they won't go off.

The Recipe 

Dry (below) and soaked (above) beans

You will need:

175g soya beans (6oz if you're old fashioned)
1.4 litres (6 cups) of water (but measure that out later).

To begin with, soak your beans overnight. Soya beans swell a lot when soaking, so start with a nice bug bowl (you'll see why later). 

After soaking the beans swell up enormously. Now drain them, and tip your beans into a blender, and measure out your 1.4l of water (6 cups, if you like). Pour enough of this water into the blender with the beans such that you can blitz it up to make a paste. Something like 2-3 cups of the water will be needed. Once you've got a good paste, then empty the blender out into a large pan. Use a little more of the water to rinse the out your blender and pour that in too. Yes, you can use a food processor if you prefer.

Soy bean paste, ready to boil

Now add most of the rest of the water (keeping back perhaps a cup full) and cook the bean paste, bringing it to a boil while stirring. Keep it boiling for 2-3 minutes. While it's warming up put a clean tea towel into a large sieve, and stand it over the large basin you soaked the beans. Tip the pulp into the tea towel and leave it to cool, straining through the sieve. Once it has cooled enough to handle, pour the last of your water through it, and let most of it drain. Then tie it up in the towel and give it a tight squeeze to get as much juice out as you can. You've now got a towel full of soy mince (this is useful stuff, I'll cover that in another post) and you've got a bowl full of white-ish fluid that sort of smells like paint. It's not quite ready yet, you need to boil it to fully denature the soya proteins and make them digestible and, crucially, not smelling like paint. I can't stress how important this is - if you don't boil it now, if you don't denature the proteins, then it'll split when you pour it into a hot cup of tea or coffee. It's revolting. 

Clean out your pan, put the milk back in, and boil it for 5 minutes while stirring it to prevent it sticking. 

Soy milk boiling and almost ready

Give it a taste, and when you're happy with it turn the heat off, take the pan off the hot ring and put it aside to cool. The longer you boil it, the richer it gets, the 'milkier' it gets, but the less you'll have at the end. Stir it occasionally while cooling, to prevent a skin forming, and bottle it and fridge it when its cool. And that's it you've made soy milk!

Put the soy mince into a tightly sealed box and put it in the fridge. It'll keep a few days and you can use it in sauces, burgers, sausages, all sorts of things. It's a lot better than soy mince you can buy too.

Once you've mastered making soy milk, it's surprisingly easy to make soy cream, from which it is just a short step to ice cream, and tofu (which is rather like curd cheese made with soy milk). Or just use it as milk in tea, on cereal, etc.

As I've already mentioned, this isn't (in my view) as good as cow or goat milk. But it's better than the other vegan alternatives, and it's at leas a short ingredient list that you're in control of. It's low cost, easy, and healthy, and by far the best of the vegan milk alternatives.