by Catherine Misener
Looking for an unbelievably easy way to add soy to your favorite recipes? Soy Anytime, the latest soy food offered by Premier Harvest, is a must for every soy pantry!
Premier Harvest has a product line geared more toward convenience cooking – Meatless Meal Kits, Pancake & Waffle Mix, Brownie, and Cookie Mixes – with Soy Anytime they may have hit on the ultimate “easy to use” soyfood. Soy Anytime is a crunchy, granular food with only two ingredients – soy flour and rice flour, and can literally be used anytime you want to add some soy to your diet. Two tablespoons contain 70 calories, 1 gram fat (0 saturated, 0 cholesterol) and 6.5 grams of soy protein. With such a high yield of soy protein per serving, Soy Anytime is not only an easy product to use but very good for you.
Like all products in the Premier Harvest line, Soy Anytime contains the Nexsoy brand of non-GMO soy flour. Nexsoy uses a chemical-free process which eliminates the “beany” aftertaste found in some soy products.
THE TEST:
What fun we are having with this product! With its granular texture, Soy Anytime can be used whenever you want a crunchy or crumb-like texture. You can use this to make a graham cracker-like crust, a streusel topping for cake and muffins, a coating for tofu, eggplant, squash…the culinary versatility is limited only by your imagination. We tried some of the uses that more quickly came to mind (those listed above), then decided to get really creative. We made a crunchy topping for a very rich chocolate cake and used some as a binding agent in Italian meatballs. We also tried one of the recipes that Premier Harvest included with the product.
THE RESULTS:
First, we tried a recipe that was provided by Premier Harvest – Chocolate Chip Bars with a Crumb Crust (we varied the recipe slightly to lower the fat). The recipe was easy to follow and prepare, the results were incredible – the crumb crust, which used Soy Anytime, was as good as any graham cracker crust I have tried. The bars were very rich and satisfied our chocolate cravings (which we frequently have as you can tell by our dessert recipes). The recipe requires a 13 x 9 pan which yields 24 bars. Two bars provide 6.25 grams of soy. Now, let’s be totally honest – we are going to eat desserts, treats, and other goodies even if they are not “good for us”. When we can satisfy our sweet tooth and reap some nutritional benefits at the same time – well, bring on the chocolate bars.
We then decided to try Soy Anytime as a coating for vegetables and yes, chicken. We mixed the granules with an equal amount of seasoned bread crumbs. We tried eggplant, yellow squash, tofu, and chicken breasts. As with most coating techniques, we dipped first in an eggwash then in the Soy Anytime/bread crumb mixture. We tried both the tofu and squash sauteed in olive oil (stovetop) and the eggplant and chicken baked in the oven. As with most soy foods, we carefully watched the cooking times and temperatures – soy does not usually do well at higher temperatures and often cooks faster than other ingredients. Everything turned out beautifully. The chicken and eggplant were both crispy on the outside, while tender on the inside. Soy takes on the taste of whatever it is paired with and in this case, the Soy Anytime tasted just like a traditional coating. The squash and tofu were also great – although we did not season the tofu before coating so it was slightly bland. Each time the coating was crispy, not soggy as you can sometimes find with other coatings and never had a “beany” taste.
As often happens, our minds turned back to baked goods. We thought Soy Anytime would make an excellent streusel topping for our favorite breakfast muffins and we were right. We combined it with a little bit of flour and brown sugar and used it as a topping for Apple Muffins and Banana Muffins. The streusel topping was very flavorful and moist and gave the muffins a slightly nutty taste – we omitted the nuts often called for in banana muffins yet still had that nutty taste, a great way to lower the fat in your muffin recipe.
Our latest endeavor was a very rich, very satisfying Chocolate Crunch Cake (yes, all recipes will be provided!). Browsing through our cookbooks, we found a recipe calling for a pecan crunch topping for a pound cake. The lightbulb went on – we made a topping with Soy Anytime instead of pecans. We pressed the topping on the bottom of an angel food cake pan (we always use this pan for chocolate cakes), then topped with our chocolate cake batter. After baking and cooling, invert the cake and you have the crunchy topping. The cake was rich, moist and so chocolate! We found this cake best when served warm, with just a small serving of our favorite soy “ice cream”. A small slice is really all you need – the cake is very dense and did I mention rich?
FINAL COMMENTS:
In the cooking demonstrations and classes I do I frequently get into discussions about how versatile tofu is – people are always sharing their ideas on how to add tofu to their daily diet by using it in smoothies, desserts, lasagna…
I have a strong feeling that as more people begin to use Soy Anytime our discussions will turn to how they use it in their favorite recipes as this product is one of the most versatile I have tried. And we are continuing our review of this product as we come across or create more recipes. If any of our readers have recipes they would like to share that use Soy Anytime, please send it to us and we can include it in our newsletter and on our site.
For more information on the Premier Harvest line of products (you will find some recipes, too) and to purchase Soy Anytime, please visit Premier Harvest Products at eFood Pantry.
RECIPES: You can find the recipes mentioned in this article here: Chocolate Crunch Cake
Apple Muffins w/ Streusel Topping
Chocolate Chip Bars – Original and Revised Recipes
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