Vegan Veg - Recipe: Yuba

Immature green soya beans (the Japanese call them edamame) can be eaten fresh or with only minimum preparation. Once dried, although more versatile, soya beans require significantly more preparation due to the presence of trypsin inhibitors, which interfere with digestion. If you are cooking with dried soya beans, you must soak them for at least eight hours, drain them, and then boil in fresh water for an hour before simmering for another three. Only then are they ready to be used.
The making of soya milk isn’t quite so arduous and can open up the door to making one’s own tofu and the more obscure okara (the left-over pulp from making soya milk) and yuba (the skin from boiled soya milk). Okara, though tasteless on its own, can be used to make burgers, falafel, koftes etc. It takes on the flavours surrounding it. Yuba can be used as wrapping material for Dim Sum or similar parcel-like goodies.

Space doesn’t allow for description of the whole tofu making process but here’s how to make the others.

1.    Also known as ‘tofu skin’, yuba is made by boiling soya milk in a wide, shallow pan. The skin that forms on top is carefully scraped off – give it time to form properly, too quick and it will fall apart.

2.    Yuba can be used fresh or left on greaseproof paper to dry and then be reconstituted later. Use it for wrapping parcels of finely chopped vegetables before deep frying – or build up in layers, marinade in soy sauce and fry.