Organic soybeans.

Soybeans are small, round and creamy yellow, with a faint dark mark where each bean joined its pod. Dry, they are hard as gravel. After a long soak and a slow simmer they turn firm-tender with a mild, nutty, slightly beany taste. In Thailand most people know them first as the warm soy milk sold in the morning, nam tao hu, but the dried beans are easy to cook at home too.

Ways to use it

• Make soy milk at home: blend soaked beans with fresh water, strain through a cloth, then bring it to the boil and simmer for a while, stirring so it doesn't catch.
• Simmer them until tender and add them to a clear soup with pork bones, daikon or winter melon.
• Cook them with soy sauce, a little sugar and ginger until the liquid turns glossy, for a side dish to eat with rice.
• Roast soaked and dried beans in the oven or a dry pan until crisp, for a crunchy snack.

Pick out any broken beans or grit and rinse them. Soak in plenty of water for 8 hours or overnight, as they swell to about twice their size. Drain, cover with fresh water and simmer gently for a couple of hours, until a bean squashes easily between two fingers. Salt goes in near the end.

Storing it

Keep the unopened pack in a cool, dry cupboard out of the sun. Once it's open, tip the beans into a jar with a tight lid. Cooked beans keep for a few days in a covered box in the fridge.

Where it comes from

Grown to certified organic standards. The certificate for each lot is shown when you trace your pack.

Every pack will carry a lot code. Enter it on the Trace your pack page and you will see the farms in that lot, the packing date and the certificate.