Soy Delicious

摘要

The soybean is a versatile plant. It's been used so extensively in glues, paints, lubricants and plastics that at one time, each Ford automobile ate up a bushel of the beans in one form or another. And what a food for humans! Rich in high-quality protein, the dried mature beans have a strong, waxy (awful, to me) flavor when boiled but can be rendered palatable as soy sprouts, soymilk, soy sauce, miso, roasted soybeans and tempeh.In its immature state—what we call edamame—the soybean is delicious with only a few minutes of boiling or steaming. The flavor is something between a lima bean and a shelling pea, except that edamame tolerates hot weather better than peas, which languish by July, and cool weather better than limas, which languish until July. The right varieties of edamame will ripen in a relatively short season, making them an unusual bean option for northern gardeners.