Another good source of highly nutritious milk nowadays came from Soya beans. Soya beans can be processed into milk called Soya Milk, which is cheaper than dairy or animal milk. It is also low in fat or lactose, whereas cow’s milk can have as much as 4%-5% saturated fat. The great news about soya milk is that it is high in protein and free from cholesterol.
According to the book Tofu & Soya, soya milk has the same protein content as goat’s milk and the same level of calcium as cow’s milk. A 100 ml of soya milk contains 0.63 mg riboflavin, 3.2 mcg vitamin B, and 1.5 mcg vitamin D, and has a total energy of 430 kilocalories.
It’s very easy to make soya milk at home. All you need is to buy an automatic soymilk maker or soy milk machine.
How to make Soya Milk
Ingredients:
- 125 g whole soya beans (make 1 liter of soy milk)
Procedure:
- Clean the soya beans and soak them in water for 10 – 16 hours. Although not necessary, you can remove the hulls be kneading the soya beans and flushing the loose hulls with water. Removing the hulls makes the extraction process more efficient. An alternative is to crack the soya beans before soaking. The hulls come loose easily and can be washed away. When you use cracked soya beans you need less soaking time: 6 – 8 hours.
- Heating the soya beans will destroy enzymes which are responsible for the development of beany flavor. This heating can best be achieved by microwaving the wet soaked soya beans during 2 minutes.
- Grind the soaked soya beans and 1 liter water in a blender. Sieve the mixture through 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 cattle feed.
- Heat the soy milk till boiling point and continue boiling for about 5 to 10 minutes. After cooling, the soy milk is ready and can be kept in the fridge for another 3 days.
- Flavoring the soy milk (optional). The soy milk can be drunk as such but taste can be improved by adding some salt (also cow milk contains a lot of salt).
With soy milk you can easily make your own fruit smoothie. Fruit smoothies are very healthy because they contain soy milk and a lot of fresh fruits.