How to Make Soy Milk Taste Better (Store-Bought and Homemade)

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When it comes to all the different kinds of plant milk in the world, there are very few that are as well known as soy milk.

Soy milk was one of the first wildly popular plant-based milk alternatives out there and it remains still one of the most popular drinks for people who cannot or do not want to have traditional milks. With that being said, there are still some reasons why people prefer almond milk or oat milk to soy milk.

One of the biggest problems that soy milk has is the fact that it has a rather unique taste to it. Unlike almonds or oats, which are foods with a relatively neutral taste that can be rather pleasant with the right flavorings, soybeans have a stronger flavor to them.

This will make them a far more noticeable addition when you are trying to turn them into milk, meaning that if you are trying it for the first time, you might be taken aback to some degree.

Despite this, soy milk is still quite the popular drink. This may leave some people wondering how it can remain so popular when it has such a unique taste to it, but the truth is that making soy milk taste better is a relatively simple process.

Before you can go into learning and understanding the best ways to flavor your soy milk, you first have to learn what is going on inside the milk to give it such a striking flavor.

Once you understand what is going on, you will have a much easier time trying to alter and fix the milk to be exactly what you want.

The Problem with Soy Milk

The problems with soy milk are twofold. On one hand, the flavor of soybeans is somewhat strong and sharp, meaning that you will notice it without any additions being made to the milk.

This can taste off to most people, leaving you thinking that soy milk tastes “bad” even though this is just its natural flavor.

This can be solved by simply adding more flavoring agents to your soy milk and this can be done with both homemade and store-bought soy milk, although more and more companies are producing flavored soy milk that you can buy in the store.

The second problem comes with the fact that not everyone knows how to get the naturally bitter taste of soybeans out of the bean before turning it into milk. This happens exclusively when making homemade soy milk, as most commercial companies that produce soy milk know how to work with their products.

This problem can be solved by learning how to properly prepare the soybeans before you turn them into milk. While this won’t completely get rid of the natural flavor of soy milk, it will tone it down enough that adding flavoring agents to the drink will make it taste as good as any other milk you could buy.

This means that, essentially, the problems that people have with the taste of soy milk come from inexperience in one or more fields. It could be that someone isn’t used to the taste of soy in their food and when there is an unnatural taste in your milk, it’s easy to assume that something went wrong in the production.

It could be that someone doesn’t know the best way to work with soybeans, leading to an overly bitter taste in the soy milk, which is problematic all on its own. And finally, it can be a case of someone not knowing that soy milk is very easy to flavor, meaning that it is relatively simple to drown out the taste of the soy.

Now the question of the matter becomes what kind of soy milk you are dealing with. The way that you will go about adjusting the flavor of the soy milk will depend entirely on where you got it from.

After all, when you are purchasing commercial soy milk products, you cannot really change the way that the beans are processed during the making of the milk.

Beginning with store-bought milk, changing the way it tastes is extremely easy as all you will have to do is add some type of flavoring agent to it.

Making Store-Bought Soy Milk Taste Right

Changing the way that store-bought soy milk tastes is extremely easy. All you really need to do is add your own flavor to it and from there, you will be ready to go.

Of course, you will want to make sure that the flavor you add complements the soy milk and doesn’t completely overpower the fact that it should still taste milky; however, that is a matter of trial and error as you work your way through what flavor additions work best for you.

Keep in mind that all of these additions can be made to homemade milk as well but there are other ways to change the flavor of homemade milk that you can try before you turn to adding different ingredients to it.

There are several different kinds of additions that you can make to store-bought soy milk. One of the most common additions that people will make to it is cocoa powder, turning it into an equivalent of chocolate milk.

Not only will you be able to have a spin on a childhood classic of a drink but the addition of cocoa powder will overpower just enough of the soy’s natural taste that you will be able to drink the milk without having to give it a second thought.

The way to add the cocoa powder in for the most effect is going to start with you heating up the soy milk that you are working with. After you put the soy milk in a microwave-safe container, you should heat it for around 15 seconds per quarter-cup of milk.

The exact amount of time that your milk will need will vary depending on the strength of your microwave but the goal will be that the milk is steaming when you take it out. If you are going to drink more milk, you can increase the time accordingly.

Next, you will want to add one and a half teaspoons of cocoa powder for each quarter-cup of soy milk. You can use any kind of cocoa powder that standard stores carry as there is nothing in the cocoa powder that will affect the texture of the milk.

Once the cocoa powder has been added, you should stir it into the milk until there are no clumps remaining in the milk and you have one smooth mixture.

To offset the natural bitter taste of using pure cocoa powder, you can add either one and a half teaspoons of white sugar or you can add about three-quarters of a teaspoon of honey for a healthier alternative.

Again, if you are working with more than a quarter-cup of soy milk, you will want to increase the amount of everything you are adding in accordance with the amount of milk that you are using.

This is the most common method that people will mask the natural soy flavoring in their soy milk but some people may not be too fond of a chocolate flavor, especially if they are drinking soy milk to try to stay healthy.

Thankfully, there are also some healthier alternatives that you can consider for your soy milk flavorings.

You can consider adding fruits to your soy milk for a healthier take on adding flavor to your drink. While fruits may carry more or less the same amount of sugar that the above method would use, fruits also have a lot more vitamins in them that you can benefit from, making it a considerably healthier way to improve on your store-bought soy milk.

For this method, you will want to begin with cold soy milk, especially if you are planning on drinking it right after the fruit has been added. As with the above method, if you are planning to have more than one serving of soy milk, you should increase the amount of ingredients accordingly.

For example, if you want three cups of milk instead of one, you would add three times as much fruit as this version calls for. You begin by pouring that one cup of cold soy milk into a blender.

From here, you will add about two tablespoons of fruit jam to the blender. This is where you have the most control over the type of flavoring that you can have in your soy milk as you can choose quite literally any type of fruit jam.

Because you will be using two tablespoons of the fruit jam, if you really want to add a noticeable flavor to your soy milk, you can use one tablespoon of one fruit jam and the second tablespoon of a complementing flavor of fruit jam.

If you do not have fruit jam or if you prefer using frozen fruits, you can substitute the two tablespoons of fruit jam per cup of soy milk with a quarter-cup of frozen fruits per cup of soy milk that you have in the blender.

You will then want to puree everything in the blender until they look fully blended. The puree option in the blender will give you the best results in flavor and texture and you will keep holding this option until your drink looks as smooth as you want it to.

If you are okay with soymilk that might have fruit chunks in it, you can get away with holding down the button for less time. Do be prepared, as the soy milk may appear a little bit frothy after you have blended it due to the increased amount of air.

However, now it can be poured and served as you would normally drink it.

Now you are ready to learn some of the tricks to making homemade soy milk taste a little bit better than it normally would. Remember that even after you have made sure that your soybeans have been processed properly, you can still add some of these flavoring options to your homemade milk if you want.

Fixing the Way That Homemade Soy Milk Tastes

Fixing the way that your homemade soy milk tastes is a little bit of a different story as you are in full control of how the beans are processed. In many cases, people will complain of a bitter, bean-like taste to their homemade soy milks and this is often indicative that the beans were not processed right.

Thankfully, because soy milk has become such a popular part of people’s lives, there are many guides out there on how you can make sure that your soybeans are being processed the way they should to get the taste that you want out of their milk.

You will want to begin by making sure that you are soaking the beans in boiled water overnight, or for at least eight to ten hours at a minimum. After the allotted time has passed, you will want to dump out the water and you will want to begin rinsing the beans so that you can be confident that there is nothing on them that would affect the flavor of the milk.

Here is where you will start to remove the skins of the beans. You will put the beans into a large bowl of lukewarm water, lightly squeezing the soybeans that you are skinning.

With enough patience and manipulation with your fingers, the skins of the beans will come off relatively easily. You will want to try to get rid of the skins as fast as you can while still being complete with your work as this will give the best flavor.

Next, you will want to toss the skins and wash the hulled beans one last time before putting them into the blender, and you can begin getting the beans processed so that you can get the milk out of them.

Soaking the beans helps tremendously as the heat will kill off the molecules that produce that bean flavor that nobody wants in their soy milk.

The longer you soak the beans, the more of those molecules will be destroyed, further reducing that bitter bean flavor that nobody wants.

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