Characteristics of soy flour and methods of preparation in industrial and home conditions. Calorie content, composition, benefits and harms to the body. Cooking Uses and History.
Soy flour is a powdered food product, for the production of which beans of the same name crop are used, cake or meal (squeezes that remain after making oil). The texture is homogeneous, dry; granulation - up to 0.3 mm; color - light cream, yellowish milky; smell - soft, fresh, with a touch of raw materials; the taste is nutty. It is appreciated for its wide range of applications, functionality and high nutritional value.
How is soy flour made?
Soy flour is harvested when the beans change color from green to gray and leaves fly off the plants. Small farms use a scythe or sickle, large industrial associations use harvesters. After threshing, the beans are poured into silos and transported to factories for processing.
The production of soy flour begins with the drying of the raw material, since the grinding of the beans is difficult. For this, special ovens-dryers, ovens are used, and in hot countries they are laid out in one layer in the sun. The optimum temperature for drying is 50 ° C. The duration of the process is 3.5-4 hours.
Threshing is carried out in several stages. In a centrifuge-like device, the membranes and the germ layer, which contains a high amount of oil, are separated (if left, shelf life is reduced due to rancidity). The repeated grinding is carried out in mills - roller or millstones. For industrial use, soy flour is made from meal.
The final product is divided into several categories
- not fat-free - from beans, the quality of which corresponds to GOST 17110 71;
- semi-fat-free - from food cake;
- fat-free - from meal.
It is impossible to determine which raw material was used by its appearance and taste.
How to make soy flour yourself
- If the starting material is whole beans, they are dried at 50 ° C in an oven with an open door for at least 3 hours, and then cooled.
- Grind in a coffee grinder or blender until powdery. It is irrational to use a meat grinder, since, despite the heat treatment, oil is released, which causes the final product to crumple.
- The grayish powder is re-dried by spreading it in one layer on a baking sheet, but already at 30-40 ° C.
When grinding the beans, turn on low speed, otherwise oxidation occurs. Such a product cannot be used for baking, since the output will be an unappetizing greyish sticky mass.
To improve the quality and taste of soy flour, it is better to use cake as a raw material. For this, the beans are wrung out. Of course, it is difficult to do this without a special device, but it is still possible. In this case, manufacturing begins not with drying the raw material, but with grinding, preferably with a meat grinder. The gruel is laid out in a thin layer on cheesecloth, folded and squeezed with a paper napkin. In this way, degreasing is carried out quickly.
If the oil is planned to be used for the preparation of cosmetic masks or for other purposes, the gauze is folded in several layers and the contents are squeezed out like juice. It takes longer, but the spin method does not affect the final result.
The partially defatted feedstock is dried in the manner already described and then milled. In the photo, self-made soy flour looks coarser than industrially made soy flour. It is gray, the grind is not uniform. But in terms of quality, it does not differ from the store one - airy and creamy. In addition, you can be sure that no chemical compounds were used during processing.
