Today I made tofu, from the soybeans I bought the other day. and I decided to document it to show you how I made it.







here's what you need:

250g dried soybeans
2 liters water
1 teaspoon vinegar
cheese cloth

wash and soak the soybeans overnight, I soaked mine right after dinner. the next morning they will look like these, drain them only when you are about to use them.

don't worry about the skins when you drain them.

put a cup of soy beans in the blender and add a cup of water slowly until it's pureed. do this by batches to make sure that the soybeans are blended smoothly like the consistency of thick soup.

 I transfer the pureed soybeans in a large container so that I can measure how much more water I need to add to it before cooking it, the ratio I use is 1:1, I filled this container to the brim with the soybean puree therefore, I added the same amount of water.

 transfer to a large sauce pan, stir it constantly so it wont stick to the bottom and overflow.

 like this, if this happens turn off your stove and let it subside before turning the heat back up. let it boil for 20 mins stirring and making sure it doesn't overflow.

 using a cheese cloth or mesh cloth, strain it over the 2nd sauce pan.
squeeze out all the soymilk from the pulp, the pulp is called okara. there are a lot of uses for okara, I use mine as extender for meatballs, burgers, meatloaf for my non-vegan family. They never know the difference and maybe the day will come when I can veganize them without them knowing ;-) I also use this for my okara burger, I will blog about this sometime.

 Put the pan back onto the heat and add a teaspoon of vinegar, mix it slowly until it looks like this, sometimes you need more than a teaspoon depending on the soybean you bought, I usually end up adding 1-3tsp of vinegar to my soy milk. It will be ready when it looks like this, the "curds" have separated from the "whey".

 Strain it using a cheese cloth, I used take out container to keep it's shape I just cut out the bottom of it so it can drain through, used my salt jar a recycled mayonaise container as weight. take it off after 20 mins if you want a softer tofe but I like it firm so I let it sit for 30-45 mins usually while I clean up.

and here's how it turned out, fits right into the take out container, store it with water in the fridge, and change every other day until you use it, but I doubt it will last that long because home made tofu is just so YUM!

next time I'll try to blog about making tempeh another vegan mock meat, so stay tuned!