Abstract

Novel Processing of Soybean to Produce Milk: An Enzymatic Approach

Author(s): Jyoti Rani and Simran Bedi

Soya products are more economic and cheaper than other products containing high-quality protein such as meat, fish, milk and other protein-rich legumes. Soymilk is nothing but the strained water that has been obtained with dissolve solids during grinding of the boiled and soaked grains. The soaked grains were blanched with sodium bicarbonate followed by processing that was also an inexpensive and convenient source to obtain high quality proteins. So, there was a strong relationship between soy food consumption and in health promoting effects similar to balanced nutrient combination that of cow’s milk but free of cholesterol, gluten and lactose along with favourable phytochemical compounds and containing phenolic compounds that has anti-oxidant properties and high amount iso-flavones, group of phytoestrogens that lowers the risk of age related and hormonal diseases. Due to increase in consumption of soymilk and its sale, a variety of new products and flavours have been introduced in the market. However, different innovations have been tried to produce “Functional Soy milk” that is to be considered as soymilk with extra bioactive components that enhance the health and lowers the risk of diseases. Soymilk has a pronounced beany flavour most commonly not accepted by the consumers as it is due to the lipoxygenase enzyme which gets active when the cotyledons broke down and enzymes come in contact with water, oxygen and lipids; these all-in combination gives the beany flavour especially in conventional method of soymilk extraction. But methods like mechanical method in which excessive heating increases the sensory properties but reduce the nutritional qualities and also produce the large amount of wastage which is called as Okara. Conventional method of soymilk extraction method vs Enzyme assisted soymilk (Hi- Media cellulase enzyme from Trichoderma viride and pectinase enzyme from Rhizopus spp. were used at varied concentrations to temperature and time combinations) method were studied. This study was mainly focused on standardizing the time period for pre-soaking of soybean grains that was followed by boiling of those pre-soaked grains and to observe its effect on the soymilk quantity and quality. Mainly the reasons to choose the enzyme assisted soymilk extraction method were to reduce the input energy in the production of milk.