Why are soaked dried soy beans cooked before fermenting?
Is it necessary to cook soaked dried soy beans before fermenting them?
Best Answer
No. Both tofu and miso require cooking the soybeans to work.
For miso, the soybeans must be mashed into a paste, which doesn't really work with raw soybeans. Further, the koji culture grows on the starches and sugars present in cooked soybeans, not raw ones. So creating a miso from raw soybeans would require you to obtain a different fungal culture designed for them, and the result probably wouldn't be miso.
Tofu is made through soymilk, which must then be boiled to make it coagulate. So while the soymilk itself is made with raw soybeans, if you don't boil it, you don't get tofu, just thickened soymilk.
Also note that raw soybeans are poisonous, so in addition to producing a product, you'd have to be sure that any fermentation process you cultivated would successfully breakdown all lectins and protease inhibitors in the beans. While fermentation is known to break down the saponins, the other two unhealthful chemicals usually require heat.
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Why is it important to soak dried beans before cooking?
Soaking beans in the refrigerator overnight will reduce the time they have to cook drastically. And the texture of the beans will also be it their best, with fewer split-open and burst ones.Can you ferment raw beans?
They are very tough, and need rehydrating, and the cooking process further breaks down those hard-to-digest starches and anti-nutrients. So even if those beans ferment while soaking, you will still have to cook them in order to make them edible.What do you do with soaked beans after soaking?
So after the beans have soaked for a while, the soaking water now contains these elements that you are trying to eliminate by soaking the beans in the first place. And this is why the bean water is discarded. So it is best to drain the water and rinse the beans thoroughly before cooking.Can you ferment dried beans?
Beans are typically fermented after cooking (you can also ferment them before cooking, but doing so can result in a really bad smell from the beans and a longer cooking time). In Japanese cuisine, fermented soybeans are known as natto and are usually eaten over rice, but you can ferment any type of bean you like.You're Doing It All Wrong - How to Cook Beans
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Answer 2
From https://www.culturesforhealth.com/:
...beans must be cooked before they can be eaten. They are very tough, and need rehydrating, and the cooking process further breaks down those hard-to-digest starches and anti-nutrients.
So even if those beans ferment while soaking, you will still have to cook them in order to make them edible. That cooking process will eliminate any beneficial enzymes or probiotics that have been added to the beans through the fermentation process.
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