Chapter 238 Soy Products
The soybeans have been completely dried. With a gentle tap, the plump soybean grains will fall out.
The two of them took turns to pound all the soybeans into pods, and then used the new broom Zhao Yeqing made to sweep all the soybeans together.
The broom is made of sweet sorghum ears. After the sorghum grains are beaten out, the leaf sheaths are removed and the sorghum stalks and whiskers are tied together.
Those sold on the market are relatively white, because they have been smoked with sulfur and look good.
Since they were using it for their own use, Zhao Yeqing was too lazy to spend any more time and just tied it up and used it.
Mu Xi put all the soybeans into a winnowing basket. Now that he has a windmill at home, he can clean up the soybeans with grass debris.
The dried soybean stalks and peanut stalks are placed together in the kitchen and burned. After the soybeans are cleaned, they can be dried for another day to ensure that the moisture is evaporated so that they can be preserved for a longer time.
Some of it needed to be left without drying and soaked again. The two planned to make tofu tomorrow.
The soybeans cannot be soaked at room temperature. They will turn sour within two hours and need to be soaked in the refrigerator overnight.
Take the soaked soybeans to the yard, move the stone mill out, one person puts the beans in while the other pushes the millstone.
After putting the beans in, you have to add a little water from time to time.
The light yellow beans soon turned into white soy milk. A total of five pounds of soybeans were ground. In addition to making tofu, there are also soy products such as soy milk, tofu pudding, bean curd sticks, and dried tofu.
Zhao Yeqing originally wanted to use vinegar to season the tofu, thinking that he didn't have brine and gypsum lactone at home, but Mu Xi said they did.
While he was resting, he took out a bag filled with white plaster from the original owner's house.
"This is the gypsum that the original owner used to make medicine. In Chinese medicine, it is called calcined gypsum, also known as cooked gypsum. I remember that cooked gypsum was also used to make tofu, right?"
Zhao Yeqing took it, leaned into the plastic bag and smelled it, and it was indeed the smell of gypsum.
She replied: “It should be the same.”
It is easier to make tofu pudding with gypsum. If you use white vinegar to make tofu, the tofu pudding will be loose, but using gypsum can make a whole piece of solid tofu pudding.
When making gypsum tofu, the ratio of soybeans to tofu is about 1 to 3, and one pound of soybeans can produce three pounds of tofu.
After filtering the ground soy milk, use half of it to make tofu, and divide the other half into two portions, boil one small portion and drink it as a beverage, and use the larger portion to make yuba.
The filtered tofu dregs are also delicious. Add some garlic sprouts and chili peppers and stir-fry them to make a dish. It is more fragrant than meat when mixed with rice.
Zhao Yeqing mixed gypsum with water, and after the soy milk was cooked and cooled for a while, he poured the gypsum water into the stirred soy milk in several batches. When he saw that it gradually turned into flocs, he covered it with a lid and simmered it. It would solidify into tofu pudding in ten minutes.
Mu Xi was cooking the second pot of soy milk. This pot was for drinking. The soy milk would boil temporarily, and it had to be cooked for five more minutes after it boiled before it could be served.
No one wants to drink soy milk in this hot weather, it has to be cooled down.
The hot tofu pudding was ready. Zhao Yeqing wanted to eat it but thought it was too hot, so he scooped out two large bowls of it and put them in the refrigerator to cool down.
I didn’t have any plastic wrap at home, so I had to use two plates as lids.
The hot soy milk needs to be cooled for a while before being put into the refrigerator. While it is cooling down, you have to cook the third pot of soy milk.
This pot is used to make yuba. After the temperature of the cooked soy milk is lowered a little, bring it back to a boil and heat it slowly over low heat until condensed bean skin appears on the surface of the soy milk. The process is somewhat similar to making milk skin in winter.
The fire cannot be too big, otherwise the bean skin on the surface will crack. The process is very time-consuming, and each piece of bean skin takes seven or eight minutes to make. The thin bean skin is lifted up with a slightly thick iron wire and hung on a small bamboo pole that has been prepared.
While Mu Xi was making yuba, Zhao Yeqing was preparing to make tofu.
The tofu mold was made of the leftover wood that Mu Xi had left when he chopped down trees to build a mushroom house two days ago. As the soybeans were about to be harvested, he took advantage of his free time to nail a mold.
Place gauze inside the square mold, pour the white tofu pudding in, gather the gauze to cover it, and then press the lid firmly.
There was a lot of water squeezed out of the tofu pudding under the mold. Zhao Yeqing put a big stone on it. The tofu was considered done when all the water in the tofu pudding was squeezed out.
Zhao Yeqing had finished making the tofu, and Mu Xi had only produced four or five sheets of yuba. There was still more than half of the soy milk used to make yuba in the basin, so she started another pot to make yuba as well.
About one and a half pounds of soybeans can produce less than one pound of bean curd sheets. This is Zhao Yeqing's first time to try it out. He had seen his grandparents making it during the Chinese New Year.
If you have a successful experience the first time, you can do more next time.
The soy milk was almost cool, so Zhao Yeqing poured out two bowls and put the rest in the refrigerator.
Add sugar to two bowls of soy milk, stir with the residual heat of the soy milk until it melts, then add two ice cubes to the bowl.
After finishing the work, each person had a cup of iced soy milk. The sweat from making yuba by the fire just now seemed less uncomfortable. The body instantly felt refreshed, and the breath was cool.
It only takes about an hour to press the tofu. The mold is not big, so you have to do it twice to make all the tofu.
Zhao Yeqing took out the first piece of tofu, opened the gauze, and poked it gently with his finger. It was bouncy and not too old or too tender. In his hometown, this kind of tofu is called water tofu.
Break a piece of tofu with your hands and put it in a bowl, poke it a little with chopsticks, sprinkle with chopped green onion, sesame, chili oil and light soy sauce, and you have the simplest cold tofu.
She was worried whether the smell of the plaster would be too strong. After all, she didn't have a kitchen scale and couldn't accurately weigh the plaster. She didn't have much experience and could only try to make it by recalling the scenes in her memory.
Unexpectedly, it was a huge success. The tofu had a strong bean flavor and the slight gypsum taste was negligible. It was paired with the fragrance of green onions and a little bit of chili oil to enhance the flavor. It was light and refreshing and very suitable for summer.
It’s a pity that tofu cannot be stored for a long time. It will go bad after only two or three days in the refrigerator. In the past, my grandmother would soak the tofu in water so that it could keep for a few more days.
The water cannot be well water, it must be boiled water. Boiled water contains fewer bacteria. Add a little salt to it and then soak the tofu, and it can be preserved for more than a week.
But even so, it didn't last long. It's not like before when you could buy it whenever you wanted. Now if you want to eat it, you have to grind the beans, filter, boil, make tofu, and press the tofu before you can eat it.
Two and a half kilograms of soybeans produced seven and a half kilograms of tofu. Zhao Yeqing took out two kilograms and soaked them in water for later cooking, and used the remaining five and a half kilograms to make fried tofu and dried tofu.
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