The quality of soy milk matters. To successfully harvest soy milk skins, you need soy milk without additives. Unfortunately, it is not easy to find at stores. What is sold (even organic) is either flavored or has some preservatives to prolong its shelf life. For that reason, I am including the step of making soy milk at home. If you are crazy enough to make yuba at home, you can start with making your fresh soy milk, a piece of cake. Buy dry soybeans at any Asian grocery store, soak them overnight, puree them with water, cook for 10 minutes, and strain milk. Keep it refrigerated for later, or start making the yuba right away. That’s it.
The size of the cooking vessel matters. Now we need a frying pan with a large diameter. The larger the diameter, the larger the surface of soy milk to form a skin, the faster you make yuba. Fill the frying pan with the soy milk 1/2″ deep and place over low heat. The heat level should keep the milk temperature right below the simmering point.
The timing matters. The longer you let a soy milk skin form, the thicker and firmer it will be. We are talking about the difference between 3-5 minutes and 10-20 minutes per skin. If you want it creamy, give it less time.
There is kumiyage (scooped) yuba and hikiage (pull-up) yuba. Both are fresh, but the second one is left to drip excess soy milk. After that, it is cut and rolled or folded. They have slightly different textures. If you want your yuba creamy, collect the skins into a container with a little bit of soy milk to be reabsorbed. Keep the container covered while harvesting the skins.
Fanning the milk doesn’t matter, proved by experiments.
