Last night I pulled a decent batch out of the incubator. It's 100% soy bean. This time I picked up a bag of soybeans at a market in Chinatown while I was there buying persimmons. They're a little smaller than the ones I get at Whole Foods bulk, maybe a different grade or strain?

The great leap this time, though, had more to do with the de-hulling process. Instead of rubbing/kneading the beans by hand to pop off all the little rubbery hulls (that would otherwise block the mold from the beans), I followed instructions I found in a YouTube video that I can't find again and used the dull dough blade in the food processor to knock the hulls of the beans after soaking them for just 10 minutes.

It worked. The least pleasant, most tedious step of making tempeh is now a matter of a few minutes in the Cuisinart. This feels like a revolution, like when some farmer took a look at the ox and said, 'what if HE pulls the plow?'

I made some okara tempeh. I had decided to try making tofu again, which resulted in some okara (and a whole lot of not-quite-right tofu). When you make tofu, you soak and then grind up soybeans. You then filter  any remaining solid bits of soybean out of the resulting soy milk, and those leftover bits are called 'okara.'


You can feed the okara to livestock, but you can also add tempeh starter to it and make tempeh. I tried twice before (the other times I made tofu). One batch was too wet and ended up rank and slimy. The other batch came out great - very tender, fluffy. The key, I figured, was drying out the okara just enough - harder to gauge than with split soybeans for normal tempeh.

I think I over-dried this latest batch. It tasted okay, but it was, well, dry, and took a whole lot of oil to fry up in the pan; it just kept on soaking it up like a sponge.

A couple months ago I was telling a couple friends at work about how I like to make tempeh, and both requested some the next time I made it. Of course I proceeded to screw up the next batch (I was trying a peanut mix, and the mold ignored the peanuts, knitting the soybeans around the peanuts together but leaving the peanuts loose and alone in the matrix. I think I overcooked the peanuts), but a few weeks later yet, I made another batch of just plain soybean tempeh, and it turned out quite nice. Both friends reported liking it, and with enough detail of how they had cooked the tempeh so that I believed their assessments.

I finally got around to making another batch. I had made one sometime in February and it turned out well, very normal. This time I had meant to split the batch into two bags: one straight-soy and the other a peanut/soy mix. When I went to the drawer to get the sandwich bags, there were none (note to self - check supplies BEFORE starting tempeh recipe), so I decided to combine the two in a larger storage bag. For reasons I don't completely understand, the mold didn't like the peanuts. The soy is all knitted together in fluffy white, but with isolated peanuts encapsulated within the soy/mold matrix. I really like peanut tempeh, so I need to figure this out. Maybe I'm undercooking them?

Trading Myths: Food Inc.

I just pulled a beautiful batch of tempeh out of the incubator - solid and fluffy at the same time, warm with its own growth. I did nothing weird or experimental with it. I watched Food Inc. yesterday in between steps (de-hulling, soaking, cooking, etc.). I was again (I've read the books the documentary is based on) horrified by our food system of enormous corporations and their captured agencies (USDA, FDA). I was frustrated, though, by setting up Salatin and his operation as the ideal, with his methane-belching cattle, and corn- and soy-fed hogs and chickens (that grow slowly, consuming more feed than their factory-farmed and miserable counterparts, thus generating more manure, more emissions, etc.). They're just trading one myth, of progress through engineering (trust the nice men in the white coats) for a Romantic agrarian myth (trust the nice men in the overalls). I'll stick with my tempeh.

Farewell to PB&J

Last night I fried up some more of the super-dense tempeh. Again it wasn't bad but nothing I'd choose to make again, not enough flavor, no lightness to it, maybe like tempeh from a larger planet than ours, appropriate for higher gravity but out of place here.

I'm nearly finished transferring the PB&J Campaign to A Well Fed World. This is truly bittersweet: I am delighted to see that the Campaign will go on, operated by enthusiastic and talented activists. Of course I am also sad to let go of the work of five (six?) years.

Super-Dense Tempeh

I decided to whip up a batch of basic tempeh for my sister and her family as a surprise. They are already tempeh fans generally, and I credit their frequent enjoyment of 'tempeh fries' with starting the itch in my brain about tempeh as a more-widely marketable food.

For some strange reason I started with a third less dry soybeans than I had planned on. All went smoothly until I started packing the bags for incubation. Both bags weren't looking as full as I likes, so I decided to pack the whole batch into one baggie. I ended up with an extra-dense bag of innoculated soybeans, and it looked pathetic 22 hours later when I pulled it out of the incubator. Still, it didn't SMELL pathetic, so I jabbed it with a toothpick to give it some more air, let it go a little longer, and was pleased to see some proper fluff on the outside. In the end I didn't trust it enough to give it away, but I fried it up last night. I was right to be suspicious. It didn't smell bad, and it didn't taste bad, but it didn't taste particularly good either - none of that mushroom fragrance I go for.