It's an untreated byproduct that you normally discard. Every culture that eats beans has discarded their bean rinse water; you don't really see recipes that have you cook the beans in their own rinse. Canned beans have been a thing for a century or more but there's a good reason why bean wastewater was only "discovered" by some random guy 10 years ago.

Saponins and other stuff in there are cool for industrial processes but you don't really want to ingest them.

[–] Hexboare@hexbear.net 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Every culture that eats beans has discarded their bean rinse water

Because there hasn't been a need to create an egg substitute that produces recipes that traditionally just used egg.

you don't really see recipes that have you cook the beans in their own rinse

I thought the soak rinse was always discarded, the aquafaba is from the cooking water (either in a can or the pot it's boiled in)

You can taste saponins, a quick google search suggests that there are definitely some people making extremely bitter aquafaba (i.e. likely with a high saponin quantity) but that's not supposed to be the outcome.

[–] infuziSporg@hexbear.net 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

What do you think is making the foaming effect, that varies from bean to bean?