Making Soy Milk at Home

For whatever reason, I have always preferred most things plain rather than flavored, and the same goes for the non-dairy milks: make it plain for me! Hold the vanilla! Actually I like it unadulterated, GMO-free, and organic. And it can be hard to find and expensive. Yes, I'm hard to please! You should see what I want for Christmas!

Read the label on the box of your plain soy or almond milk and you will discover that it's not as plain as you thought and has other stuff with long fancy chemically-sounding names added to it.

So what's a country boy lost in the big city to do but take things in hand and start making his own organic, non-GMO, unadulterated soy milk at home. Duh! I had heard of a friend who had a soy milk maker thing-a-ma-jig and that sounded like a gadget to me, and as much as I like "plain", I LOVE gadgets. So a quick search of Amazon turned up this thing called a Soyajoy G4 Soy Milk Maker. I H-A-D to get one! So I did! Of course!.

It's so super easy. Here's all you need to do to make your own soy milk at home:

• Order one of them things from Amazon, otherwise you're going to have to do a lot of grinding all by yourself
• After clicking Buy Now, get off your tush at some point and go to a store like Mother's Market or Wholefoods or Sprouts or whatever wholesome choice grocery store you have near you and head on over to the bulk bins and buy a bunch of soy beans. You're in for a treat as you'll discover just how cheap non-GMO, organic dry soy beans are, even at these outrageously rip-offy health food stores! I mean, I got something like 5lb of beans for a mere 3 bucks! It was so embarrassing at the checkout. Cheapskate was written all over my brow!
• Next, bring them home and measure out 1 1/2 cups of beans using the teeny-tiny measuring cup that comes with the SoyaJoy machine (you won't believe how few beans you need to make almost 2 liters of soy milk - by this point you are starting to realize just how ripped off you have been all these years buying "Silk is Soy")
• Wash the beans to get rid of any wind-blown dust and dirt that might be on those suckers, and look out for any stones or pebbles masquerading as soy beans and hoping to break your teeth
• Fill the contraption with some nice clean filtered water up to some point between the min and max water level mark that's on the inside
• Throw in the beans
• Go outside and play for 8 to 12 hours (don't talk to any strangers!)
• When mom calls "Dinner time!" come back and press the button that says "Soaked Beans"
• Eat your dinner and mind your manners for about 30 minutes and wait for the beeps
• Hey Presto! you have fresh homemade soy milk. 
• If you like your soy milk sweetened, add some agave or honey to taste
• Oh, wait a minute, at this point you have gritty soy milk and you need to strain it. The joyous people at SoyaJoy sent you a sieve with the contraption (very nice of them) so strain it through that into the plastic pitcher (jug to some of you) that they also sent, or better still, get one of these "nut milk" bags from Amazon that I just  got recently. I found that by squeezing the soy bean meal in that bag I got almost 2 more cups of soy milk than I had been getting by just using the sieve! Now that's good home economics for ya!

One last thing before I go. Don't throw away that soy bean meal! I learned from my husband who is Japanese that they call it "okara" where he comes from - they like to avoid any words with an "l" in it like "meal", that's why. It's full of healthy soy protein and fiber, and we have news for you! You can use it to make delicious protein-packed cookies! Next time your doctor or a friend or enemy asks you "How do you get your protein?", you'll be able to answer "How do you think I get my protein! From my okara cookies of course!" Sheesh - some people!

In my next post I'll share my hubby's secret okara chocolate chip cookie recipe with you, but you'll have to promise to keep it quiet.

Want to get going yourself on making soy milk at home? Click this picture below of the SoyaJoy thing-a-ma-job to check it out at Amazon. Have fun! Save money in the long run, and let food be thy medicine!

--John