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[Dai Pai Dong] Soya Bean Milk

Soyamilk is known as dou jiang in Chinese. It has been a common drink among the Chinese since the second century B.C. It is an intermediate product resulted from tofu-making. It tastes good and natural especially when it is just done and is still hot.

How is soyamilk done?

Soyamilk comes from whole soybeans and goes through 5 different processes before you can have a taste of it.

1. Soaking whole soybeans in water overnight
2. Rinsing with water two to three times
3. Grinding in a stone mill with fresh water 6 times of the beans and turning the beans into a slurry
4. Filtering to remove the residue or the pulp, the filtrate is the raw soyamilk
5. Cooking the raw soyamilk until it is boiled and edible

Today, the making of soyamilk is somewhat modified to give added flavour and longer storage life.

1. Hot-grinding method: Unsoaked soyabeans are ground in a preheated grinder with hot water. The slurry is maintained at temperatures between 80^oC and 100^oC before being put in a steam-jacketed kettle to boil and filtered afterwards. This will inactivate the enzyme in the solution that yields a beany taste, thus resulting in a nice flavour. Then the resulted soyamilk is bottled, sealed, sterilized and put on the market. They come in a variety of forms like powdered soyamilk and concentrated soyamilk.

2. Preblanching method: Similar to hot grinding, pre-blanching also gets rid of the beany smell of raw soyamilk, though in a different way. Soyabeans are presoaked in boiling water and hydrated. The beans are ground with cold water to make a more solid slurry, which is heated and homogenized.

Why should you pick soyamilk?

Because it is low in fat and rich in protein, iron.

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