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Soy and legumes from Lausanne, Switzerland

Okara tempeh (EPFL Waste-to-Taste, 2024)

A lab recipe from EPFL that turns okara, the wet pulp left from soy milk and tofu, into a tempeh-like cake with the tempeh mould Rhizopus oligosporus. The okara is soured with vinegar, sterilised, partly dried to 70 % water, mixed with three times the usual starter and held at 30 °C for 48 hours in pierced bags.

Fully documentedSoy and legumes2 days

Recipe

Amounts from a sourceLaboratory conditions chosen by the study (Koptelova et al. 2024); not a commercial recipe.
OkaraFresh from Migros Industrie and frozen within hours; 82.4 wt% water as received[koptelova2024]
VinegarMixed into the thawed okara to lower the pH and keep bacteria out[koptelova2024]
Rhizopus oligosporus starter (commercial)15 g per kg of okaraThe supplier advises 5 g/kg for soybeans; okara needed more[koptelova2024]
Startercommercial Rhizopus oligosporus tempeh starter

Total time across the recorded steps: 2 days

Start
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121 °C

What changes: Okara is soured with vinegar and heated hot enough to kill all microbes

Step 1 of 5
Sour and sterilise the okara
Time
45 min
Reported
Temperature
121 °C
Reported
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Rhizopus oligosporus
Rhizopus mycelium
Moulds

The thawed okara is mixed with vinegar first; the utensils go into the autoclave too. Output: sterile, slightly acid okara.

Flavour
Not documented
Texture
Not documented
Colour
Not documented

Microbes at work in this step

vinegar lowers the pH and the autoclave kills what is left

Method

Measured measured in a studySet fixed by a specification or tested recipeReported one source reports itTypical a general value, not sourced for this fermentUnconfirmed not yet checked against a source

At a glance

A lab recipe from EPFL that turns okara, the wet pulp left from soy milk and tofu, into a tempeh-like cake with the tempeh mould Rhizopus oligosporus. The okara is soured with vinegar, sterilised, partly dried to 70 % water, mixed with three times the usual starter and held at 30 °C for 48 hours in pierced bags. Made in 5 steps over 2 days. The longest step, incubate until the mould binds a cake, takes 2 days (Koptelova A 2024) and runs at 30 °C (Koptelova A 2024). Rhizopus oligosporus does most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main step2 daysReported[koptelova2024]Incubate until the mould binds a cake
Temperature30 °CReported[koptelova2024]Incubate until the mould binds a cake

What makes this one different

Unlike tempe gembus, which is made from pressed okara wrapped in leaves, this lab recipe sours, sterilises and part-dries the okara, then uses a measured dose of starter three times the soybean dose. The study reports each choice it tested, including the ones that failed. In a 2022 Taiwanese study of soybean residue (okara) tempeh, a different recipe, autoclaved okara inoculated with 5 % R. oligosporus at 30–33 °C grew bright-white mycelium in 24 h and 48 h, and sporangia turned dark with longer fermentation [hariyanto2022].

Related ferments

Variants

  • Okara with chickpeas (Luya, Switzerland)A company product that ferments okara together with chickpeas; the study cites it but gives no process.

Safety

Okara spoils fast because it is so wet. The study notes that plain okara does not survive 48 h at 30 °C, while the fermented cakes did not spoil in that time.

History and sources

Every number is labelled with how it is known. How this atlas is made

Part of an EPFL study, published in Chimia in December 2024, on turning wet food side streams into food. The same paper describes a Swiss start-up that dries brewer's spent grain. A 2026 Thai lab study fermented okara at about 60 % water and 30 °C with five fungi; the Rhizopus cakes were ready in 24 h (Farniga 2026).

  1. [koptelova2024] Koptelova A., Ducrey A., Lunven B., Köller L., Nagornova N., Appenzeller E.W., Abitbol T. 2024, Waste-to-Taste: Transforming Wet Byproducts of the Food Industry into New Nutritious Foods, Chimia 78(12):824–830paper
  2. [farniga2026] Farniga A., Pinsirodom P., Wattanachaisaereekul S. 2026, Fungal biotransformation of okara into functional food, comparative species-dependent metabolomic and antioxidant profiles, Current Research in Food Science 12:101396paper
  3. [hariyanto2022] Hariyanto I., Hsieh C.W., Hsu Y.H., Chen L.G., Chu C., Weng B.B. 2022, In Vitro and In Vivo Assessments of Anti-Hyperglycemic Properties of Soybean Residue Fermented with Rhizopus oligosporus and Lactiplantibacillus plantarum, Life 12(11):1716, doi:10.3390/life12111716paper