How to Make Soy Milk (2024)

Today I am sharing my method and recipe for homemade soy milk! Aka, how to make soy milk from scratch, using dried soy beans.

Homemade soy milk is super creamy, delicious and free of any additives for texture or preservation. You control the sweetness and you can even control the thickness and creaminess of the milk!

Is Making Soy Milk Hard?

Soy milk from scratch is actually insanely easy with a little prep and the right tools and some practice too. I will show you my method, and then provide a few additional methods...

Homemade Soy Milk

One thing we go through a lot of in our house is soy milk. Every morning for fresh, foamy lattes. In baking. Over top cereal and oats. In smoothies. Soy milk is still my plant milk of choice due to the rich protein content, delicious taste, creamy texture and foaming qualities for coffee beverages.

Fun Nutrition Fact: Soy beans contain 107mg choline per ½ cup. Random nutrition fact for some, but as a pregnant lady in her third trimester, choline is super important - and a lot of people think vegan / plant foods are not good sources of it. Wrong! Loads of plants contain choline. And soy beans are one of the best sources. Win for today's recipe!

So yeah, like many of you, I had always thought about making my own soy milk from scratch! But until I finally did it, I didn't know how amazing the results would actually be.

Do I Need a Soy Milk Maker? Aka A Fancy Appliance?

Like many of you, I'm guessing, I didn't want to buy another machine. There are a bunch of 'soy milk makers' on the market. This one gets a lot of attention. And some people swear by the all-in-one soymilk makers for ease! But for my kitchen space, I just didn't want to invest in another bulky appliance right now. Plus, I already owned an appliance that would help make the process much easier!...

Soy Milk From a Juicer

I remembered reading in my Hurom juicer manual that it made plant milks. Nut milks like cashew and almond. So I figured, why not soy milk??

I did a quick google search and sure enough loads of posts popped up showing that yup, you can make soy milk in a juicer. And my Hurom juicer is one of the best for that! Hurom even details on their website how to make soymilk that becomes homemade tofu!

Tofu will be my next adventure in soybeans. But for today, we stick to the milk.

But don't worry, you don't need a fancy juicer to make soy milk. I have another option for those of you who just want to use your blender!..

Soy Milk In a Blender

If you want to go the most basic route of making soy milk from scratch, buy a nut milk bag. The method for you will be similar to mine below, with a few added steps..

1. Soak dried soy beans overnight. Use enough water to cover a few inches over the beans. They will double in size and absorb a lot of water! Tip: Use filtered water for soaking when possible.
2. Drain and rinse beans.
3. Blend in a high powered blender, along with filtered water. (My ratio for my juicer soy milk is 1:2, 1 cup soaked beans for two cups of water) -- BUT Water amount may vary since this method is a bit different than mine below.
4. Then you pour this bean mixture through your nut milk bag to strain away the bean pulp. Yes, this step gets messy and will take a while.
5. When your liquid/milk has strained away from your pulp, you boil the soy milk as I do below and then re-blend with salt + sweetener and any additional water if desired.
6. I would also strain the milk a few more times through your bag or a mesh strainer before pouring into storage jars for the fridge.

This is the OXO large mesh strainer I use for this recipe and so many recipes! I also use it to scoop my boiled bagels out of the water and strain small batches of pasta.

But for anyone who wants to make things a bit easier and go the soy milk in a juicer route, keep reading for my method below. Including specifics on how I measure and sweeten things!

The Best Beans for Soy Milk?

Doing some online research and Amazon searches, I landed on Laura Soy Beans as one of the best option out there for soymilk. How did I land on this brand?

Well, obviously, I wanted non-GMO soy beans. Next, I wanted organic, aka pesticide free. Upon finding Laura Soy beans, I liked these facts about them:

• USA grown, family farm: "Laura® Soybean Products are grown, harvested, processed and packaged right here on our 5th generation family farm."
• 100% Natural Protein, grown straight from the earth
• Non-GMO(not genetically modified)
• "Best tasting soymilk" claim from the brand
• 5 lbs for around $18
• Are they Organic?... See that answer below...

Organic Soybeans?

The packaging does not say 'organic' so I worried a bit about pesticides. This is the response from the grower...

Laura Soy Beans Organic Response:

"We are not certified or stamped organic, we are non-gmo. ...the biggest difference between our soybeans and certified organic is that we have a two year crop rotation with corn whereas to be certified organic you must have a 4 year crop rotation where you would only have a soybean crop once every 4 years.

We do not use any commercial fertilizers on our soybean crop. We do use limited weed control before and then mechanical tillage, later in the season we will walk the field with garden hoes to take out any large weeds that may make harvest difficult. The freeze kills the weeds that remain in the field and then they are not a problem at harvest. We do not use any insecticides on the Laura® Soybeans.

With our current production program, my father and I have been growing non-gmo soybeans for family tofu shops in Japan since 1987. We have been testing the beans at independent labs since 1987 and have never found any residues. We are very confident in the safety and quality of our Laura® soybeans. We produce our own seed every year and only produce non genetically modified soybeans, so our equipment has never seen GMO soybean seeds." - Laura Soybeans

Do I Feel Good About These Beans?

..So that's the response. Honestly, in all my blogging years I have been on a lot of farm-based press trips and the discussion about "certified organic" is always a complex one. Mostly because the qualifications to be certified organic by the USDA are SO strict and rigid - and expensive.

Smaller farms sometimes just don't bother to get certified, due to the cost and hassle. And while Laura beans are indeed NOT certified USDA organic, you can read the details on that from their response.

While I would love to find a go-to organic, USA-grown, non-GMO soy bean that I can easily buy on Amazon or in stores, I am pretty happy buying directly from this family-owned USA farm. And I agree, the flavor and quality on these beans is great! I feel good about using them. If anything changes, I will update this post!

Can I Use Another Brand of Soybean?

YES! Certainly. You just need dried soy beans as your starting point. I cannot verify the flavor of all other brands, but yes, any dried soybean will work with this recipe.

One other brand I found on Amazon was Mulberry Lane. They are certified USDA organic + non-GMO! However, Amazon has a few bad reviews on there, so I was hesitant to pay more for possibly lesser quality beans. If you have tried this brand, please let me know!

Do I Need a Hurom Juicer or a Soymilk Maker?

So again, my recipe specifically using a slow, masticating Hurom juicer and not a soymilk maker. I have not tested this recipe with juicers other than my Hurom, but I assume that other similar juicers that make nut milks, etc would work just fine.

Would a juicer like a Breville (non masticating juicer) make soy or almond milk?

I found this answer board on Amazon and a few people say that they can make nut milks in their Breville! So I would guess that soymilk is possible too.

Ok, so let's get to it!!!

Making Soy Milk From Scratch...

Step one: Soaking the Beans

Soak your dried soy beans in water for at least 8-10 hours - overnight works best. Add enough water to cover the beans by a few inches because they will double in size! Tip: When possible, use filtered water for the soak, since that will be hydrating your beans.

Step Two: Rinse the Beans

Drain and rinse your soaked soy beans.

Step Three: Setup your Tools

I am showing the juicer method. So I setup my Hurom juicer. Use the fine-pulp straining basket for the most liquid from those beans! But I have used both and both mesh straining baskets will work.

I have my milk strain right into my large Staub soup pot that I will be boiling the beans in.

I also get my filtered water handy.

Side Note!!! Soy Bean Skin...

Ok, so a lot of the recipes I saw said that you had to remove the outer skin of the soy beans before processing. I started to do that with my first batch and a few beans in and I was like, this is so tetious! If I actually have to do this each batch, I will never make my own soymilk. So. I decided to just process the beans with the thin skins on and so how it went. And it worked fine. Sure, you have more pulp, but it worked fine for me.

If you want to remove the skins, you certainly can. But it would have taken me an extra twenty minutes to do so for the two cups of beans I soaked, so no thank you.

My opinion: You do not need to remove the skin of soybeans to make soy milk!

Step Four: Process The Beans

Turn on your juicer. Scoop one cup of beans and add to the juicer. Follow that with two cups of filtered water. The beans should all flow down into the juicer on their own with the water added.

Repeat with all the soybeans until you have processed all the beans that have soaked.

Step Five: Boil the milk

Unlike nut milks, soy milk is not meant to drink RAW. Boiling is a must-do step for taste and food safety.

To boil: Transfer your pot of soy milk to your stove. turn heat to high. I like to scoop a bit of the foam off the top so that it doesn't boil over as easily. More on that in a sec...

Scooping a bit of foam off the top...

Boiling Tip!!

This is super important. So overall, you want to boil the beans for about ten minutes. However, soy milk is SO delicate to boiling over that you will need to monitor the heat very closely.

Stir the milk with the heat on HIGH for 2-3 minutes to get it going. When you start to see any movement, thickening, bubbling etc on the top, reduce the heat. If you see a lot of movement - immediately turn the heat to low or OFF, and keep stirring. You just need to reduce the heat, catch the milk, before it roars overboard.

After the milk was *almost at boiling* and you turned the heat down, simmering calmly, you can turn the heat back on or back up to medium-low. Keep stirring as the milk simmers - another 4-5 minutes should do it.

Another note: The longer you simmer, the more the milk will reduce, making a creamier, thicker soy milk.

Make sure to closely monitor the milk for boiling and boiling over.

A rolling boil is just not possible with soy milk because it will boil over in seconds.

How do I know this?

Well, the first three times (yes three) that I made soy milk my milk boiled over. Like I didn't even turn away, it just goes from warm to over-boiling in seconds. So if your milk boils over on your first try, don't be surprised. There is a rhythm to it!

And boom.... One of my boil overs.....

Why Do I Have to Heat Raw Soy Milk?

I had this question too! And while it isn't easy to get a straight answer on the internet, the closest thing I found was this note:

"Heat treatment of soymilk is necessary for several reasons: to achieve microbial safety, enhance shelflife and colloidal stability, enhance flavor and nutritional value by denaturing trypsin inhibitors, haemagglutinins, saponins and other antinutritional compounds." - (Rackis, 1974;Kwok and Niranjan, 1995;Iwuoha and Umunnakwe, 1997;Kwok et al., 2002), source

Soymilk Curdling in Coffee?

Additionally, a lot of people seem to get upset about soymilk curdling in their coffee. Honestly, this has never happened to me with my homemade soy milk. And it has happened to me with some boxed brands! So I don't know what the factors are there... but aside from some slight separation between the milk and soy liquid in the storage jars (a very quick shake fixes that) I am so excited how rich, creamy and curdle-free this milk is.

Step Six: Strain + Flavor

Remove the pot from the heat and pour into your blender. I always pour through my OXO large mesh strainer in order to remove any pulp that may have formed from the boil - or from the juicing. Be careful, the pot and milk will still be warm.

To sweeten + salt, I use this flavor formula...

For every 6c soy milk, I add ¾ teaspoon salt + 3-4 tablespoon agave syrup.

...You can absolutely tweak this! Sweeten more or less. USe less or a pinch more salt. And even add in flavors like vanilla bean, cinnamon or maple.

Other soymilk sweetner options include: coconut sugar, maple syrup, Medjool dates or basic cane sugar.

Step Seven: Chill in the Fridge

Pour your blended soymilk into large storage jars or another storage container. Place in the fridge and chill overnight.

And that's it! Serve the next day when chilled.

You can use this homemade soy milk in:

• lattes (iced or warm)
• add to black coffee
• smoothies
• cereal or oatmeal
• baking recipes

I would guess that this soymilk lasts about 4-5 days in the fridge, though we always go through ours in 2-3 days easily! When I use this milk in lattes, I simply microwave it for about 2-3 minutes, until hot and add my Nespresso espresso.

Foamy Latte Tip: I also like to blend my milk with a bit of cinnamon and sweetener to get it nice and foamy!

Taste Testing When Warm?

The flavor of the milk will get so much better after chilling. So while you can taste test while warm, just know that it will taste better when fully chilled. The beany flavor seems to get muted with chilling.

Here is the printable recipe version...