soya - what the devil is it?

[pointedegg]

I was eating my ready made m&s salad this evening, a tasty soya bean one. (Not wearing beige at the time.)Nice beans.

But where exactly does soya milk come from? Does all soya come from those fresh little green beans?

fermented soy beans!

isn't that soy sauce omdb?

sorry, that's soy sauce![blush)

Soy milk is made from gringing the beans and mixing with water.

I forgot about soy sauce. Another soya product.

So you grind those perky green beans and get white milk? Do you grind them fresh or dried?

I just found this on a website: Soya milk can be made at home by soaking and crushing Soya beans and filtering the liquid, which is Soya milk. Some have invested in a Soya milk machine that cooks and grinds the Soya beans and makes Soya milk, fresh in your own home. There are different brands of Soya milk machines on the market. You don't need these machines to make good quality Soya milk.

Traditional soy milk, a stable emulsion of oil, water and protein, is simply an aqueous extract of whole soybeans. The liquid is produced by soaking dry soybeans, and grinding them with water

from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soy_milk

so now you know

In fact, when I was a vegan I found out you can make 'milk' in this way from a number of pulses.

oh that's interesting. Thank you both. All that from a bean.

What an exciting vegan life you had, body

Curdling soya milk with a coagulant makes tofu! There, another thing you now know about soy beans!

Oh the stories I could tell pointy!

ooooh yum yum

urgh. What's coagulant?

you don't wanna know pointy

when runny snot turns into bogies - that's because it has coagulated

More useless knowledge, that I will impart here (warning it's not nearly as disgusting as it sounds!):

Natural calcium sulfate (gypsum) and magnesium chloride (nigari) are the most common tofu coagulants used. They have been used for hundreds years in Japan and China. Nigari is composed mainly of magnesium chloride, but also contains other minerals found in seawater, with the exception of sodium chloride (sea salt). Gypsum is a naturally occurring calcium sulfate.

It's all so unappetising

yes pointy, but then, so is tofu.