How to make Soy Milk

It's very easy to make soy milk at home, even if you make soy milk on a daily basis. As an alternative, you might find a soy milk maker (or soy milk machine such as Soyajoy, Soylife, Miracle...) very helpful.

Step 1: Ingredients

You need about 125 g whole soy beans to make 1 liter of soy milk.

Step 2: Soaking the soy beans

Clean the soy beans and soak them in water for 10 - 16 hours. Although not necessary, you can remove the hulls be kneading the soy beans and flushing the loose hulls with water. Removing the hulls makes the extraction process more efficient. An alternative is to crack the soy beans before soaking. The hulls come loose easily and can be washed away. When you use cracked soy beans you need less soaking time: 6 - 8 hours. I personally never de-hulled the beans and I had optimum results.

Step 3: Heating the soy beans (optional, but recommended). This is what is called Cornell Method (developed at Cornell University). Heated soy beans in addition to very hot water used in the production of soymilk make for a final product with little (or non-existent) beanie flavor.

Heating the soy beans will destroy enzymes which are responsible for the development of beanie flavor. This heating can be also achieved by microwaving the wet soaked soy beans during 2 minutes.

Step 4: Grinding the soy beans

Grind the soaked soy beans and 1 liter water in a blender. Sieve the mixture trough a cheese cloth and recover the soy milk. The insoluble material which remains on the sieve is called okara, and can be used as an ingredient for bread making or as integral part of delicious dishes that feature okara as a main ingredient. When soy milk is industrially made okara is sold as cattle feed. It is a very versatile by-product and yields to a lot of different uses.

Step 5: Boiling the soy milk

Heat the soy milk till boiling point and continue boiling for about 7 to 10 minutes. After cooling, the soy milk is ready and can be kept in the fridge for another 3 - days. Glass containers are recommended since prolong the soy milk’s life. At this point flavorings and a little salt (for improved taste) can be added.