Home Made Soy Milk

Soy Milk isn't everyone's cup of tea, so to speak, but I've been having it in my tea and coffee for over 20 years now.
The Spring of 1994 was a very bad year for hay fever and I suffered badly. My hay fever didn't dissipate once Summer came. It went through to Autumn and Winter. After trying a few doctors who wanted to prescribe cortisone, I finally visited a Naturopath.

Back then (sounds like forever ago!), Naturopaths weren't considered to be health professionals by the government so there was no health rebates available.
Janelle immediately revised my diet and I was basically on a detox for 6 months. No dairy, no wheat, no yeast, no sugar, no alcohol. It was incredibly hard as there just wasn't the foods or ingredients readily available, especially where I lived. I lost about 5 kilos and I wasn't particularly big anyway.
But, my hay fever went away! I haven't suffered from hay fever in all that time. Maybe the occasional sniffle, but nothing to worry about....except for this year, but that's another blog post.

Since that time, I reintroduced all those items back into my diet but have found I'm not particularly fond of dairy anymore. I just can't stomach cow's milk in my tea and coffee and rarely eat cream. I like a little cheese and eat a lot of yoghurt, though!

Over the years I've been buying soy milk in the UHT cartons. There's only a couple of brands that I like and one of those is Vitasoy Vitacafe. I don't know how many of these little containers I've left at various places in all that time. I'd take one with me wherever I went so I could enjoy a cup of tea or coffee.

I have given some thought into making soy milk, but all the recipes I found were labour intensive and made litres of it at a time. However, recently I discovered that I could have been making it in my Thermomix all this time! I discovered that I have the book with recipe in it after browsing a Facebook page that I enjoy, Thermobexta.

The recipe comes from the Thermomix book, A Taste of Asia. I've changed it a little, so I believe I can post the recipe here. It's absolutely delicious. I also use it in my smoothies.

The okara that's left over can be used in vegie Burgers, meat loaf, sausage rolls etc.

Soy Milk

100g organic Soy Beans, soaked overnight in filtered water with either lemon juice or whey added
400g boiling filtered water

Add drained beans and water to TM bowl and blend on speed 8 for 1 minute.

600g water
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 Tbsp maple syrup (or 1 Medjool date, de-seeded)
pinch salt

Scrape down and add remaining ingredients and cook for 10 minutes on 90, speed 2-3. Skim foam from the top.
Cook a further 2 minutes on 100, speed 2. Keep an eye on it to make sure it doesn't boil over.
Cool to about 60.
Strain through muslin or a nut bag into a glass bottle. Refrigerate.

Keeps for about 4 days.