Cooking ~ I learned something about Soy Milk

Just thought I would throw out this little tid-bit for those of you who like to play around with recipes in the kitchen.

I really wanted that southern classic sausage gravy on biscuits. So my daughter and hunt around for the ingredients to make it from scratch . . . hmmm . . . we only have a little bit of real milk and decide to save it. But we do have a carton of Vanilla Soy Milk. (I am lactose intolerant, actually so intolerant that I am a lactose bigot ) So we try to make our sausage gravy with Soy Milk.

Let me just say this now. BIG MISTAKE.

First off it smelled like a vanilla milk shake, not like wonderful peppery sausage gravy. So to get over the smell issue I dump in some of my favorite ancho chili based hot sauce figuring that would spice it up and neutralize the vanilla flavor. Well it did work, but not enough, so I shook in a few more dashes of the hot sauce. Now I have a bowl of pink sausage gravy in front of me. Odd color, but now it is flaming hot!

I like Thai food, so flaming hot is acceptable. Not normally in the morning, but what the heck, I am willing to eat this.

Did I mention the texture is sort of funky? Seems that when the flour and the soy milk mix in the skillet they form some sort of tapioca like sort of simulated rubber balls in the gravy. No amount of stirring will get rid of these little balls.

Well you are all invited over for breakfast . . . we have plenty of left overs

Come on Bob, you know you can't make any southern food without plenty of fat (whole milk, heavy cream, butter, etc.). I'm having fresh sausage (pig was butchered Sat.) gravy tonight along with some other trimmings as well. Nothing like fresh sausage when making gravy.

Let this be a lesson to you

Have you tried Rice Dream or Almond Breeze? I like the Rice or Almond "milk" better than Soy.

I like to have the chocolate Rice Dream for breakfast; I'll take a cup of that, a banana, and maybe a dab of strawberry jam and put it in the blender for a morning smoothie drink.

You are right; these drinks do not substitute that well for real cows milk. I frequently make espresso/mocha's at home. Rice and Almond milk makes a funky mocha... Of course, so does dry milk... Still get my mocha, but tastes funky

Good post Bob. Made me laugh.
I can just see you adding all the hot stuff trying to get the sweet taste out. I'm sure somewhere along the way you just knew this was not going to turn out good....but you were to far along to stop then.

Thank you for the invitation, Bob, but I don't think I'll take you up on it!

Anita, I could mail it to you. It set up into a concrete hard block in the skillet. I don't even think it would require putting it into a box to ship it. I'm sure you could just pop it into the microwave and it would re-heat just fine! Heck I'll even pay the shipping costs. Maybe Timba would like it?

I did learn that the ancho chilies really burned my mouth for a long time. BEER totally solved that problem. Maybe a bit early to drink alcohol here, but I'm retired so what the heck!