Munching Mondays - Soya beans and meat replacing

I'm not a vegetarian but I do go vegetarian for one week in a month (sometimes I eat meat during that week  because I'm not that disciplined but mostly veggies are eaten)

I don't do this for health reasons. I'm healthy-ish and have no allergies to dairy or gluten product. It's just an excuse for me to eat more veggies because, have I ever mentioned that I love veggies? I LOVE THEM!

However, vegetarian food available in Malaysia has imitation meat which contains a lot of flavoring and additives to give it a similar taste of meat.Not to mention can sometime be very overpriced.

 No offense to vegetarians, but I'm honestly and sincerely confused as to why you eat imitation meat? Could someone please enlighten this poor uncultured soul?

Moving on, so I usually eat tofu and eggs to sub proteins but recently, I came across a bag of dried soya beans. I bought it thinking I would make soya milk (which I will) but it's really rather a lot of soya beans.

And then it hit me! I could use soya beans as a protein substitute as well! Thus this blog post was born (fanfares and grand music!)

To use dry soya beans, you need to re-hydrate them by soaking them for 8 hours at least. I just soaked them overnight. Pop them into a bowl with enough water to cover two times the amount of soya beans and say goodnight.

 The next day, your soya beans should look like the one on the right (double the size). The one on the left is a dry bean.

 I wanted to use these beans as minced meat so i gave them a little roast in the over for about 10 minutes to get that chewy meat texture

Pop them into a grinder and.....

Voila! soya bean pulp. Now go and do what ever you want with it. Search for recipe's using soy bean pulp or okara.

I think I'll use this to make okara cookies next time!

Asia Colion