The Okara Cookbook: Toasted coconut okara

Sunday, September 30, 2012

Toasted coconut okara

This recipe is adapted from a recipe in Shurtleff and Aoyagi’s “The Book of Tofu” for something called “Okara Granola”. The original recipe uses vanilla instead of coconut essence, and is great as a sprinkle on many things: I have a couple of tablespoonfuls over my cereal in the morning, and incorporate it into cookies and brownies and things. This coconutty variation opens up a world of possibilities: if you give your own imagination a chance, you’ll find no shortage of ideas for using either the original or this recipe.

Ingredients:

2 cups okara

1/4 cup honey

2 tbsp. grapeseed oil

1 tbsp. natural coconut essence

pinch of salt

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 180oC. Combine all ingredients, and place in a large baking pan. Cook for 1 1/4 hours, stirring occasionally, until golden. The house will smell beautiful! Cool, and store in an airtight container until needed.

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What is okara?

Okara is the Japanese name for soybean lees - the fibre-rich byproduct of making soymilk.

Anyone who makes his or her own soymilk and tofu knows about okara. If you’re not careful and forget to use it, soon your fridge and freezer are bursting with little bags of clumpy white stuff. In desperation, you can feed it to the dog or add it to the compost heap, but this is a real shame, because okara is very nutritious stuff. It’s the fibre your body needs. It’s where the nutrients that didn’t make it into the tofu ended up.

Adding okara to your baked goods – muffins, bread, pancakes, whatever – is a no-brainer, and no recipes are needed for this. Adding it to other “dump and guessem” dishes like soups, stews, and chilies, is also a no-brainer. There are also many traditional Chinese or Japanese recipes for simmered and stir-fried okara. These are delicious, and worth chasing up.

I turned to the Internet in desperation years ago when I got my first soymilk machine, and didn’t find what I was looking for - hence this cookbook. It was originally a simple page, hosted on a public server, and I used to get masses of hits on a daily basis. But times have changed: the Internet is a bigger places, there are more people making their own soymilk, more cooks willing to share their tips, and there are lots more recipes out there now. I hope my collection will be a good addition to the wealth of knowledge out there. Excuse the lack of pictures! The recipes are from the original page - when posting pictures of your recipes was Just Not Done - and I'll add them as I can.

Aknowledgements must go to William Shurtleff and Akiko Aoyagi, whose seminal work, “The Book of Tofu”, has inspired me and countless others to turn to soy and reap the benefits.