Is Mung Bean Tofu a SCAM? | Will It Tofu?

The Long story short: You asked if mung beans will tofu. Well. I tried and failed. A few commenters insisted it can work. So I tried again. And again. And again. I still don’t recommend. Why? What went wrong? Watch or read on…

Watch Part 1: Will Mung Beans Tofu?

Watch Part 2: Is Mung Bean Tofu a Scam?

Soooo…Will Mung Beans Tofu?

You asked if mung beans will tofu and I gave it a try (actually many tries) for “Will It Tofu”; the YouTube series where I use the traditional method for making high protein, low carb soy tofu and apply it to non-traditional ingredients. The goal is to find out which beans, peas, seeds and nuts can be transformed into a soy tofu alternative that is comparable by texture, nutrition, and versatility in cooking. Just look at the finished mung bean “tofu” below. Doesn’t that look like it fits the bill?

 

Looks can be deceiving.

The Method

In “Will It Tofu”, I try to keep the method as close to the original as possible. 

1. soak dry ingredient overnight in the fridge to rehydrate
2. drain, then blend the rehydrated ingredient with fresh water
3. strain to separate the fibrous pulp from the milk
4. cook the milk (simmer at least 10 minutes for peas and beans)
5. add a coagulant
6. press the curds and refrigerate overnight

Note: there are recipes out there for “tofu” made from whole legumes that are blended and then cooked until set. This method is similar to making polenta and produces a “tofu” that is quite delicious. Check out my Burmese Tofu recipe for more on that. However, doesn’t have the same qualities that make soy tofu so useful and versatile. To be clear, I’m aiming for tofu that is

• bouncy,
• high protein,
• low in carbohydrates,
• able to be cooked like soy tofu and not fall apart (i.e. can be boiled, braised, marinated, grilled, etc.)

Check out my post on successful Soy-Free Tofu to see successful results from chickpeas, green peas, pumpkin seeds and more.

The Mung Beans (and the confidence!)

Originally, I meant to try whole green mung beans for the video. However, it was surprisingly difficult to find mung beans at the grocery stores near me. Finally, I found a large bag of split mung beans and pounced on it! I truly believed that mung beans would turn into high protein, low carbohydrate, bouncy tofu with no problems.

The Variations

In total, I tried making mung bean tofu four different ways while sticking to the original method as much as possible. 

1. Hot Soak and coagulated with gypsum (calcium sulphate),
2. Cold Soak and coagulated with gypsum,
3. Cold Soak and coagulated with lemon juice, and
4. Cold Soak and coagulated with white vinegar.

Variation 1 – Hot Soak with Gypsum

There are two ways to rehydrate dried beans; hot or cold soak. The cold soak, taking 8 hours or more, is more traditional. Plus, I think it hydrates the beans more evenly. But with split mung beans being so small, I thought a hot soak in about one hour would suffice.

Previously, I did the hot soak method with pigeon peas and it worked! The Pigeon Pea Tofu came out bouncy and firm. Plus, pigeon pea tofu was able to withstand boiling without breaking apart (as you can see in the photo below).

So this time, having only been able to find split mung beans, I applied the same hot soaking method to rehydrate them: one hour soak in just boiled water.

Afterwards, the 454 grams (1lb) of split mung beans had soaked up 336 grams of water.

Then like usual, I blended the drained beans with about double their volume of water in my Vitamix. Because these were such small little split mung beans, I blended the first half for just 20 seconds on high.

The milk was easy to strain; too easy. The pulp had visible specks of yellow which tells me I could’ve blended for longer. So for the second half, I increased the blend time to 30 seconds on high.

The fresh mung bean milk had a visible layer of starch at the bottom right away. 

But as usual in this series, I let the milk rest for about one hour to let even more starch sink to the bottom. Throughout this series, I’ve tested shorter and longer settling periods and 40 – 60 minutes seems to be the sweet spot. Any longer (even overnight) doesn’t seem to help.

Then I gently ladled the milk to a pot and reserved the starch layer for other uses. Leftover starch can be used to thicken soups and sauces just like cornstarch. But traditionally, mung bean starch has been utilized to make noodles! See this post for the time I tried making noodles with chickpea starch.

Beans have to be cooked and Mung Bean Milk is no exception. So I simmered the milk for 10 minutes. During this time, a skin formed on top which I took as a good sign! Soymilk also easily forms a skin during simmering and it’s used to make different recipes.

Afterwards, I raised the temperature to 180°F before adding the coagulant: 1 1/2 teaspoons of food-grade gypsum (calcium sulphate) in 1/2 cup of room temperature water. After stirring the coagulant in, the temperature was just above the 165°F that we aim for when coagulating soy tofu.

Then I covered the pot and let it rest for 15 minutes on the warm stove top.

The resulting curds were soft and jiggly. The whey was clear yellow with no hint of milkiness. Great signs!

However, as I filled the tofu press, I noticed it was filling up higher than I would expect. Nevertheless, I was confident that I would have mung bean tofu the next day!

After chilling overnight in the fridge, the mung bean curds had compressed as expected.

Upon unwrapping, it was clear to me that things had gone horribly awry.

It’s hard to tell just from photos, but you can see the edges have crumbled. When slicing, the knife did not come away cleanly. Instead, the mung bean “tofu” clung on and left mushy mung bean paste on the edge. The blocks were not bouncy and firm. Instead it was easily flattened by the back of a spoon.

The mouthfeel was like very compressed mashed potatoes. And the taste wasn’t great either. It had the flavor of watered-down mung beans with a hint of bitterness.

I even tried to season the outside of a couple cubes and pan-fried them. But nothing could mask the taste of failure.

What went wrong?

These mushy results resembled the time I tried making fava bean tofu without removing the starch. So to me, it seemed that too much starch remained in the tofu.

I also started to suspect that maybe the hot soak was not suitable for mung beans after all. Perhaps I just got lucky with the pigeon peas. A few commenters who seemed to have experience with mung bean tofu echoed this thought. They asked me to try again with a longer soak and some wanted to see a longer settling step.

 

Variation 2 – Cold Soak and coagulated with gypsum

With the first failure out of the way, I tried again with split mung beans from the same package as before. This time, I soaked 1lb of dried beans in cold water, leaving it in the fridge to rehydrate for 24 hours.

The next day, the split mung beans were nice and plump. Plus, there was a visible layer of starch on top of them. After draining, the rehydrated beans weighed 891 grams, meaning they soaked up about 100g more water than the hot soaked mung beans.

I continued on to blend the beans with double their volume of water, in half batches, for 30 seconds in the Vitamix. Then I used my nut milk bag to separate the milk from the pulp. This time the pulp came out fine and smooth without visible chunks; just what I like to see!

This time, I let the milk sit for 2 hours to allow the starch to sink to the bottom of the bowl; more than double the usual amount of time. However, after comparing the footage, it doesn’t seem there was a difference.

I gently scooped out the milk to avoid disturbing the starch. After isolating the leftover starch, it measured about 90 grams; a lot less than the 233g of starch expected from 1lb of these mung beans. 

The mung bean milk was cooked just like in the first variation. A taste test revealed that this cooked mung bean milk tasted a lot like soymilk with just a slight bitter aftertaste. Then I continued by letting it come to coagulation temperature, adding the gypsum, covering the pot and letting it rest to coagulate.

At first glance, the result looked good! The milk had solidified and when pressed with a strainer, clear whey emerged.

Scooping into the curds revealed a soft and delicate texture. 

However, when filling up the tofu press, I could tell things were not well. Fine curds were escaping from the cloth and the whey was becoming milky. Plus, the amount was coming up to the top of the press as in Variation 1.

 With a heavy heart, I continued the process and put the curd-filled tofu press in the fridge to chill overnight.

The next day revealed what I  feared. The unwrapped block of pressed mung bean curd was so soft that when I tapped it that my finger sunk right through. It was potato-free mashed potatoes again. This time the flavor was good though; just freshly cooked mung beans but a lot smoother.

This tasty mung bean mash seemed suited to one thing I had been craving anyway: hummus! I blended it with tahini, lemon juice, garlic and salt. Delicious!

However, after I satisfied my craving, I experienced a slight flare-up of my chronic tendonitis symptoms. This tells me that the finished result was too high in starch. Though I’m not a fan of pain, this was a useful clue as to why the tofu didn’t turn out bouncy. There was still too much starch left in the milk, and therefore, in the finished mung bean tofu.

Variation 3- Cold Soak and coagulated with lemon juice

Recently, I had a failure with chickpea tofu. I used a new bag of chickpeas and followed the same process as I usually do. But instead of lovely bouncy chickpea tofu, this batch did not coagulate. When I tried again with a different bag, it worked as usual. All this to say, I was beginning to suspect my particular bag of mung beans. Perhaps it just didn’t have the right stuff for some reason. However, it was a very large bag and I wasn’t close to being finished with it. For this series of tests, I decided to keep going.  This time, I decided to test a different coagulant. 

I used the exact same mung bean milk-making method as before but was even more careful during the starch separation step. Then I cooked it up and added 1.5 tablespoons of lemon juice into a half cup of room temperature water as the coagulant.

The result was even worse! The milk appeared to be separated into small chunks, resembling cottage cheese. The whey was not clear; it was milky indicating incomplete coagulation.

So I warmed the mixture over low heat for another 15 minutes to encourage more coagulation.

Unfortunately, it didn’t help. The milky whey was thick like a starch-thickened sauce. That tells me it’s still a starch issue. If that’s indeed the case, there would be nothing more to do except throw in the towel.

I was not ready to throw it in though, so I added more lemon juice and repeated the warming step. No bueno.

At this point, I was desperate. I added vinegar an repeated the warming step again as a last ditch effort!

Of course it didn’t help.

Variation 4 – Cold Soak and coagulated with white vinegar

With the last pound of mung beans, I repeated the milking procedure. This time I was less careful about the starch separation step, pouring from the bowl directly into the cooking pot instead of carefully scooping. After cooking the milk and making sure it reached 180°F, I poured in a solution of 1/2 cup of water and 1 1/2 tablespoons of white vinegar.

We came full circle. The result was very much like Variation 1. The curds looked promising and the whey was clear. After pressing, the block seemed solid. But it did not slice cleanly. And when gently squeezed, it crumbled.

At this point, I am half convinced that mung bean tofu is a scam. 

But with so many anecdotes of mung bean tofu in my comment section, I still will not give up! Next, I have finally sourced whole green mung beans. And if that’s not enough, I have some powdered amylas enzyme which is used to turn starch into sugar!

Please look out for the the next installment of “Will Mung Beans Tofu”!