Boiled soybean and tomato salad

Name: Boiled soybean and tomato salad
Total time: 25 min
Yield: 2 servings
Ingredients: Dried soybeans 1/2 cup (90 g); Cherry tomatoes 10 (150 g); Onion a quarter (50 g); Olive oil 1 tbsp; Lemon juice 1 tbsp; Salt 1/4 tsp; Black pepper a little

The beans need more than 30 minutes at a hard boil. The tomatoes are not only for flavour — they are there to pull the iron out of the beans.

2 servings25 min

Ingredients

Dried soybeans1/2 cup (90 g)
Cherry tomatoes10 (150 g)
Oniona quarter (50 g)
Olive oil1 tbsp
Lemon juice1 tbsp
Salt1/4 tsp
Black peppera little

Method

Soak the soybeans for eight hours or more. Overnight is easiest.
Throw the soaking water away and start again with fresh. Some of the gas-forming oligosaccharides leave with it.
Boil hard, uncovered, for at least 30 minutes. A gentle simmer will not do — lectins and trypsin inhibitors only break down with real heat. They are done when a bean crushes between your fingers.
Rinse under cold water and drain. Dressed hot, the onion cooks and loses everything but sweetness.
Slice the onion thin and soak it in cold water for five minutes, then drain. The sharpness goes.
Halve the cherry tomatoes and whisk the olive oil, lemon juice and salt into a dressing.
Toss the beans, tomatoes and onion together and grind pepper over. Leave it ten minutes — the beans take up the dressing.

Cooking note

The 30 minutes is not negotiable. Undercooked beans keep lectins and trypsin inhibitors that block digestion and upset the gut. A pressure cooker shortens it, but in an open pan it is at least 30 minutes at a genuine rolling boil.

The tomatoes and lemon are here for iron. Boiled soybeans carry 5.14 mg of iron per 100 g, but plant iron is non-haem, absorbed at only 2–10%. Vitamin C in the same meal raises that substantially. Here 150 g of cherry tomatoes and a tablespoon of lemon juice do that job.

Tea and coffee do the opposite. Tannins block non-haem iron. After this salad, leave the coffee an hour.

Discarding the soaking water does two things: the gas-forming oligosaccharides — raffinose, stachyose — leave with it, and so does surface debris. Fresh water also gives a cleaner-tasting bean.

Soaking the onion draws out the sulphur compounds that make it sharp. Those compounds are also what onion is valued for, so if you can take the bite, skip the soak.

90 g of dry beans comes to about 200 g cooked. Split between two, that is 100 g each — 18 g of protein and 6 g of fibre.

Ingredients used here

Grains & legumes

Strong evidence

Soybeans

Across 40 randomised trials and 3,285 participants, endometrial thickness, vaginal maturation, FSH and oestradiol all stayed put. LDL did fall — by 4.76 mg/dL.