Soy milk maker
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A soy milk maker is a small kitchen appliance which automatically cooks soy milk, a non-dairy beverage made from soy beans. Some soy milk makers can also be programmed to make almond milk and other vegetable-based beverages.
Home-made soy milk is usually at most one third as expensive as store bought soy milk—approximately $0.20 per quart. Additionally, it can be made to the drinkers' tastes and nutritional requirements, providing added value. Soy pulp or okara, a healthy by-product of soy milk preparation, can be used as an ingredient in many recipes and food products.
Ordinary methods for making soy milk at home are often very labor-intensive (requiring beans to be soaked, ground in a blender, strained, and then cooked). Soy milk machines perform many of these steps automatically, greatly simplifying home-based soy milk production.
[edit] Standard operation
Soy milk makers work similar to a combination between a home blender and an automatic coffee maker. Properly-soaked soy beans are placed into the filter cup, where the machine grinds them into a fine paste. The soy milk is then filtered (in a process similar to that of tea making) into water which is heated, fully cooking both the soy beans and the okara.
Most soy milk makers include a mechanism to stop the boiling soy milk from overflowing. The heater is turned off as the water level approaches the top of the chamber, and then turned back on as the soy milk returns to an acceptable level. This process is repeated for the length of the cooking period, which lasts for approximately fifteen minutes.
When the soy milk has fully cooked, the machine will automatically turn off, leaving the okara in the filter cup and the soy milk in the water chamber. Many machines will beep to inform the user of the soy milk's completion.
