Tofu is pretty good, and so is soymilk. Unfortunately, these are two things that almost always come in disposable packaging. I’ve avoided them for a few months now. But last week, I went and visited my friends from Hong Kong. When I was there I ate a lot of tofu. After I left, I decided that I had to learn to make it, because I realized I kind of miss it. So yesterday I went to the bulk aisle in Whole Foods and filled a cloth bag with a bunch of organic soybeans. (If they’re not organic you can pretty much assume they’re genetically modified. Same goes for corn, cotton and canola.) This soymilk/tofu recipe produces a byproduct, okara. I’ll post some recipes you can make to use this stuff up. Here’s my recipe for tofu and soymilk:

Ingredients:

• 3 cups dried soybeans
• water
• 1/3 cup lemon juice

Rinse the soybeans. Pick out any discolored or bad looking beans.

Put them in a large bowl of water, and let them soak in the fridge overnight.

In the morning, my soybeans looked like this:

They expanded a lot. Make sure you add enough water to the soaking bowl. Next, drain the soybeans and blend them in a food processor in small batches. Add the soaked soybeans to the food processor with enough fresh water to cover them, and blend until creamy and smooth.

Add the blended soybeans to a very large pot. Add 12 cups of water.

Cook for about 20 minutes, or until it starts bubbling I suppose. Strain into another large pot. The stuff in the strainer is okara. It can be frozen for up to five months according to a website I read. I put my okara in a glass container in the fridge.

The liquid in the pot is soymilk. If you want soymilk, take some out. I did. I put it in a glass milk bottle.

To make the tofu, heat the soymilk to 180 degrees.

I got that thermometer for Christmas from my little sister. She knows me well. Next, add the lemon juice. I had to use lime juice because I didn’t have any lemons. It worked out fine though.

Gently stir. In 5-10 minutes, the soymilk will separate into curds and whey. The curds are the tofu.

Line a strainer with a dishcloth, and pour this mixture through. You could save the whey for something I suppose, but I don’t know what that would be. Garden watering, maybe?

Press the tofu under something heavy. I devised this weird situation to do this:

Press it for about 20 minutes. Now you have tofu! I’m using mine in stir fry.

There it is. Homemade tofu. Truly a pain in the ass. (But at least I didn’t throw anything in the landfill.) Compared to the perfectly shaped brick from the store, it doesn’t have much to brag about aesthetically either. I don’t care if it isn’t perfect as long as it fries nicely though. I’ll see how that goes when I try it. Enjoy!