That's how we make tempe

Tempe's the most wanted food that we missed so much since we've lived in UK. It's difficult to find tempe in any store in Southampton, except in china's town or buy online from Holland. That's way, before we went to UK, we had learned how to make tempe from one of tempe's maker in my home village. We also brought tempe starter supposing we couldn't find it around UK.

We've tried several times, but always end up in the trash! Firstly, our tempe smelled so weird as tempe become rotten. At second and third experiment,  tempe had better shape and perfect mold, but they had strong bitter flavor.. :((

Still, then we learned from our trial, we found our mistakes and come up with a better way in making tempe.
Alhamdulillah, in our fourth experiment, we can manage our tempe. They had good shape, perfect mold, and soft bitter taste.

Materials that we used : 

• 1 kg of soybean
• Tempe stater 2 grams (we use RAPRIMA ragi  tempe)
• 6 sealed sandwich plastic bag 
• 3 tablespoon vinegar
• a large pot

Here are steps in making our own tempe.

Step 1: Soaking and dehulling soybeans

Wash soybean, then soak them with hot water approximately 12-18 hours, the longer the better. We use whole soybean, so after soaking, we split them by squeezing them with a kneading motion. Stir gently causing the hulls to rise to the surface, then  pour off  water and hulls into a strainer. Add fresh water and repeat until most hulls are removed. Don't worry if a few hulls remain attached.

If you are lucky, you can find a store that sells dehulled soybeans. The easiest way is to crack the soybeans with a loosely set grain mill. Ideally each soybean is cracked in half. 

Step 2: Cooking the soybeans

Put the beans in a cooking pot and water to cover the soybeans. Add 3 tablespoon vinegar and cook for 30 minutes. Drain off the water and dry the soybeans by continue heating them in the pot on medium heat for a few minutes and until the beans are dry. 

Step 3: Let cooked soybean in room temperature

Allow the soybeans to cool down to below 35°C. 

Step 4: Inoculating the soybeans with tempe starter

Sprinkle the soybeans with 1 teaspoon of tempe starter. Mix with a clean spoon for about 1 minute to distribute the tempe starter evenly. It's very important to mix the tempe starter very well: it reduces the risk for spoilage and the fermentation will be faster.

Step 5: Incubating the beans

Take sandwich plastic bags and perforate them with holes at a distance of about 1 cm by a fork. This will allow the mold to breathe.
Divide the soybeans in the six bags and seal them. Press them flat, making sure that the total thickness of the beans is max 3 cm. Place the packed beans in an incubator at 30°C or at a warm place for about 36- 48 hours during which the tempe fermentation takes place, we use boiler room. 

Step 5: Our tempe have done!!

The plastic bag filled soybean should be filled completely with white mycelium (mold) and the entire contents can be lifted out as a whole piece. It's done, I can cook them as my fam wish or store them in the freezer for my future cooking.