Soybean Salad with Carrot and Cucumber

Soybean Salad with Carrot and Cucumber is a very easy bean salad. It contains only three vegetables to balance the colour of the salad. The dressing is an authentic miso mayonnaise. It is full of umami.

Many of the bean salads you find on the internet consist of a few kinds of beans such as kidney beans, chickpeas, and cannellini beans. But my bean salad uses just soybeans. Mixing soybeans with cucumber and carrot gives the salad some bright colours.

Cooking Dried Soybeans – Steaming vs Boiling

In Japan, you can buy boiled soybeans in a pack or a can at supermarkets, but I have not seen cooked soybeans where I live. I can only find canned cannellini beans, black beans, chickpeas, mixed beans, etc.

So if I want to make a dish with soybeans, I need to use dried soybeans. I have to soak them overnight, then cook them before using them in a dish.

Dried soybeans that I bought from an Asian grocery store.

In my recipe, Gomoku-mame, I boiled the soybeans. But today, I steamed them because it is the better way of cooking soybeans.

The steaming method keeps the nutrients within the beans much better than the boiling method. By boiling the beans, you let the good nutrients out into the water.

For example, compared to the boiled soybean, the steamed soybean retains potassium 2.5 times more than the steamed one. Protein, Vitamin B1, and Vitamin B2 are retained 1.36 times, 1.56 times, and 1.8 times more respectively.

Steamed soybeans are tastier because the beans keep umami better than the boiled ones. I found that the steamed soybeans were sweeter too.

What’s in My Soybean Salad with Carrot and Cucumber

• Dried soybeans
• Diced cucumbers
• Shredded carrots

Miso Mayonnaise

• Mayonnaise
• Miso

You can add more vegetables if you wish, but make sure that the ratio of the total amount of vegetables and the dressing is close to the recipe. Placing the salad on a cup of lettuce will look nice too.

The dressing is a simple miso-flavoured mayonnaise. I used Kewpie mayo, but you can use any brand of mayonnaise, including Western-style mayonnaise. The flavour of the miso mayonnaise will be slightly different with Western-style mayonnaise due to stronger acidity, but it will still taste good.

How to Make Soybean Salad with Carrot and Cucumber

1. Rehydrate soybeans.
2. Steam soybeans until tender, then let them cool.
3. Mix the soybeans, cucumber, and carrot well in a bowl.
4. Mix the Miso Mayonnaise ingredients well in a small container.
5. Add the miso mayonnaise to the bowl and mix well.

Cooking dried soybeans takes a long time. You need to soak the dried soybeans in water overnight (about 8-10 hours) to rehydrate, then steam them for 1 hour. But you can freeze steamed soybeans, so you can cook a large quantity and stock them up in the freezer.

You can use steamed soybeans to make Gomoku-mame, by following step 3 onwards of the recipe card instructions. You can also make  Hijiki Seaweed Salad with steamed soybeans in place of edamame.

Although this is a vegetable salad, soybeans make your stomach full. I think that you can have this salad even as a main since it contains good protein. Soybean Salad with Carrot and Cucumber is a great vegetarian food.

Yumiko

5 from 1 vote

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Soybean Salad with Carrot and Cucumber

Prep Time

10 mins

Cook Time

1 hr

Soaking Time

10 hrs

Total Time

11 hrs 10 mins

 

Soybean Salad with Carrot and Cucumber is a very easy bean salad. It contains only three vegetables to balance the colour of the salad. The dressing is an authentic miso mayonnaise. It is full of umami. It is a good vegetarian food.

Don't forget to see the section 'MEAL IDEAS' below the recipe card! It gives you a list of dishes that I have already posted and this recipe that can make up a complete meal. I hope it is of help to you.

Recipe Type: Salad

Cuisine: Japanese

Keyword: bean salad, miso mayonnaise, soybean salad

Serves: 2

Author: Yumiko

Ingredients (tbsp=15ml, cup=250ml)

• 100g/3.5oz Steamed Soybeans (note 1)
• 200g/7.1oz cucumbers (I used 2 Lebanese cucumbers)
• 50g/1.8oz carrot shredded (note 2)

Miso Mayonnaise

• ½ tbsp miso
• 2 tbsp mayonnaise

Steamed Soybeans (makes 200g+/7.1oz+)

• 100g/3.5oz dried soybeans
• 1L water in a bowl

Instructions

Making Steamed Soybeans (can make ahead)

1. Soak dried soybeans in a bowl of water for overnight (8-10 hours). Drain. The soybeans should be plump (note 3).

2. Put the soybeans in a steamer (note 4) and steam for 1 hour. Let them cool.

3. Put the excess soybeans in a zip lock bag, remove air and freeze it for future use.

Making Soybean Salad

1. Trim both ends off the cucumbers. Quarter each cucumber lengthwise, then cut them into 1-1.5cm/⅜-⅝" long pieces, perpendicular to the first cut.

2. Put steamed soybeans, cucumber, and carrot in a bowl and mix.

3. Put the Miso Mayonnaise ingredients in a little container and mix well.

4. Transfer the miso mayonnaise to the bowl of vegetables and mix well ensuring the vegetables are evenly coated with the miso mayonnaise.

5. Put the Soybean Salad in the middle of a serving bowl, making a mound.

Recipe Notes

1. You can use boiled soybeans instead but steaming retains the nutrition within the beans better. The flavour of steamed soybeans is better than boiled beans too.

2. I used the shredding side of my box grater. The surface of the shredded carrot is not as smooth as the surface cut by a knife. This allows the dressing to stick to the carrot better.

3. My 100g/3.5oz of dried soybeans became 230g/8.1oz after it was rehydrated.

4. You need quite a lot of water to steam for 1 hour. If your steamer cannot take a lot of water, you can add boiling water when the water level of the steamer becomes low. I used a deep pot with a stainless food ring (also called mousse ring) at the bottom, and put a stainless mesh bowl with beans on it (see the step-by-spte photo in post).

If your steamer is not very wide and the pile of beans is thick (like my pot), shift the beans in the centre outwards to allow the steam to rise easily in the middle. This will steam the beans more evenly.

5. The salad keeps for 2 days in the fridge.

6. Steamed soybeans are great to freeze. You can make a lot at once and freeze them for each serving.

You can make Gomoku-mame (Simmered Soybeans with Vegetables) and Hijiki Seaweed Salad (Hijiki no Nimono) using steamed soybeans. 

7. Nutrition per serving.

serving: 193g calories: 231kcal fat: 16g (24%) saturated fat: 2.3g (12%) trans fat: 0g polyunsaturated fat: 9g monounsaturated fat: 3.6g cholesterol: 5.8mg (2%) sodium: 385mg (16%) potassium: 649mg (18%) carbohydrates: 14g (4%) dietary fibre: 5.8g (23%) sugar: 3.2g protein: 9.9g vitamin a: 87% vitamin c: 7.1% calcium: 5% iron: 11%