Product review: Carnation Soy Creamy Cooking Milk
Recently, I received a sample of Nestle’s new Carnation Soy Creamy Cooking Milk. It’s the only soy milk product in Australia designed for cooking, for use in both sweet and savoury dishes. Being specially designed for cooking, this soy milk won’t separate when heated (it’s so off-putting when that happens!). It’s lactose free, gluten free and cholesterol free and is suitable for vegetarians and vegans.
I don’t think of myself as lactose intolerant, but I do get “gluggy” if I consume too much dairy (I mentioned this fact in my previous post about macaroni cheese), so I was quite interested when I heard about this product. I drink my tea with soy milk, but it took quite a long time for me to get used to the flavour. I have never been very keen on using soy milk in cooking though – we’ve found the soy flavour too strong, usually spoiling the taste of the dish. We used soy milk to make pancake batter once, for example – you guys know how much I love pancakes – well, after the first couple of bites, I didn’t want to eat any more – a big FAIL!
So anyway, we received two 375ml tins of the Carnation Soy Creamy Cooking Milk, and Jac used one to create a creamy chicken and mushroom dish. It was kind of like Chicken Tonight chicken and mushroom, but made from scratch. :) Jac served the chicken and mushroom dish with garlic mashed potatoes and steamed green beans.
The dish didn’t turned out as creamy as I expected, but I was surprised and pleased to discover the soy milk was quite mild in flavour. I could taste it, but with the chicken, mushrooms, onions and garlic, it was not bad at all. I was able to enjoy the succulence of the chicken pieces and the bounciness of the mushrooms – Jac used lots of mushrooms, both fresh and tinned – without an overwhelming soy taste. I enjoyed the dish so much I ate leftovers for breakfast the next day – chicken and mushrooms on garlic mashed potatoes make a fantastic breakfast – and the day after that! The gravy seemed to get better with age!
We still have the second tin of the cooking soy milk to use. We were sent some recipes in PDF format on a USB key in the box with the two tins of soy milk – but knowing Jac, she’ll use them as inspiration and create her own recipes. There’s a recipe on the back of each tin too, and there are plenty of recipes online at the Nestle site.
I’m looking forward to eating whatever Jac cooks with that second tin of soy milk. But maybe next time I need to get someone who’s really anti-soy milk to try the dish, for the “real” test! I won’t tell them it’s been made with soy milk, and will just wait and see if they notice and make that “ugh, this doesn’t taste right” face. :)