Okara veggie hotdogs

Anyone who makes their own soymilk knows all about the okara mountain. The soybean pulp left over from a batch of homemade soymilk used to just get composted here at Chez Thrifty.

Now, however, I’ve discovered that okara makes a fine substitute for tofu in homemade sausages and hotdogs.

With okara, the raw sausage “dough” isn’t quite as easy to work with as when tofu is used, because it’s slightly less cohesive. The sausages are also a bit more delicate when cooked, so be gentle with them. But okara makes a very fine sausage indeed.

Yesterday, I made hotdogs using okara, and today we had a simple supper of hotdogs, pan-fried spuds and coleslaw.

I followed my standard hot dog recipe, except instead of tofu, I used the okara from one batch of soymilk from my SoyQuick Premier 930P. I use okara that is well-squeezed, which yields a weight of 190-200g. I then add water to the okara so that the total weight of okara & water is 250g. This okara/water mix is used instead of the 250g of tofu in the original recipe. Other than that, the recipe and directions are the same.

You may be tempted to use wet okara instead of well-squeezed okara plus water. But I would advise against this, as the one time I tried it, the dough (and resulting sausages) turned out too soft. I think the soymilk in wet okara pulp was the culprit.

I should also add that I remove the skins from the soaked soybeans before making soymilk with them. I think this makes a superior okara.