Calories in Soyabean Curry

This page is about the whole soya bean, soaked and cooked as a curry the way rajma is, not about soya chunks or granules, which are a processed, defatted product. The reference recipe makes one bowl from 30 g of raw soya beans, 50 g of tomato, 25 g of onion and one and a half teaspoons of oil. That is a katori-size helping. It ranks 11 among the 20 dals and pulse curries compared here, level on energy with chole at 196 kcal, but the make-up of those calories is quite unlike any other bowl in the group.

Fat supplies 57% of the energy, protein 26% and carbohydrate only 17%. Other pulses are starch with some protein; the soya bean is protein and oil with little starch. So the 12.2 g of fat in the bowl comes from two places, the bean's own oil and the cooking oil, and with an ordinary vegetable oil little of it is saturated. The 12.5 g of protein stands well above the 7.1 g of rajma and the 7.3 g of chole, curries built on the same recipe. The bowl also has 8.8 g of fibre.

A bowl of soyabean curry is about 9% of a sedentary man's daily energy requirement and 12% of a woman's. Its 12.5 g of protein is the main reason to cook it: two bowls give 25 g, a strong return for 392 kcal. Because the bowl is low in carbohydrate, it pairs naturally with rice or roti, and the grain rounds out the meal. Soya protein is already more complete than that of other pulses, so this is one curry that does not lean on the cereal for protein quality.

Whole soya beans must be soaked and cooked thoroughly; undercooked beans are hard to digest and taste raw. Soya comes up often in questions about thyroid medicine and hormones, and a calorie page cannot settle those: people with a thyroid condition or kidney disease, and anyone with a soya allergy, should take advice from their doctor or dietitian before making soyabean curry a daily food.