Tofu. The food that weird people eat. Well, when cooked right, it’s actually quite good. In fact, if you’ve eaten Chinese, Vietnamese or Thai from a restaurant, you’ve most likely eaten tofu and thought it was chicken.
This is a travel website. Why should there be an article on how to cook tofu placed here? A couple reasons. If you love travel, you’re most likely saving money to travel. At around $1 per pound of firm tofu, this is a much cheaper source of protein that any ground meat – and much healthier. Also, if you love travel, chances are at some time you want to visit the Amazon Rainforest. By eating tofu instead eating a fast food burger, you are not eating cheap South American beef. Therefore, you are helping to decrease demand and decreasing the need to slash and burn more of the Rainforest to create pasture land.
I’ve been vegan since November, 2008 but didn’t start cooking with tofu until just recently. I started by making a tofu, coconut milk, garlic, tomato, curry pasta thing that even my meat eating family devoured. Problem was, despite all the strong ingredients, I could still taste the bitter of the tofu. I tried several things, including dumping refined sugar in during the cooking process, but the bitter taste was always there in the background. Turns out, I wasn’t doing the tofu right.
The bitter taste would seem to come from the liquid the tofu is preserved in. With the tofu still saturated with the fluid, the tofu could not soak up the flavours it was cooking in and simply retained that bitter taste.
Luckily, the process is extremely easy and does not take a whole lot of time. First off, the block of tofu needs to be removed from the package and pressed to squeeze out the fluid. Pressing is simple (see video below to see the process in detail). All you need is some paper towel, two plates and something heavy. It turns out, those old textbooks hanging around the bookshelf and collecting dust can serve a purpose.
Put one plate down. Put a few layers of folded paper towel down on the plate. Place the tofu on top of that paper towel. Take another piece of paper towel and wrap over the top. Place the second plate on top. Place the heavy weight on top of the plate. Go about your regular business for about 30 minutes and you should have a much drier piece of tofu and some really wet paper towel. Hint – do not let the paper towel hang over the edge of the plate! The fluid will travel outside the plate via the paper towel and drip all over the kitchen counter.
Once you’ve pressed out the fluid, it’s time to drain even more through the next step. But, first, this is time for your creative juices to flow. In the image above and the video below, I’ve gone with a simple cube pattern for my tofu. Many use a triangle. My next experiment will be thin, long strips that will hopefully resemble egg noodles or pasta.
Drop your cubes, triangles or Dolphin shaped pieces of tofu onto a non-stick pan. Do not add anything else like olive oil or butter. At this stage, you’re still trying to drain the tofu and not trying to fill it back up. This is called a dry fry or dry frying your tofu.
Turn the burner to medium heat. What you need to do at this stage is press down on the tofu with a spatula in order to squeeze out the last bits of fluid. Press down hard but not so hard that you crush the tofu. What you’re listening for is the sizzle of the fluid being squeezed out and boiled away. What’s a really good sign is when the tofu makes a high pitched squeel.
Flip the pieces often so that they aren’t getting burnt. What you’re looking for is a nice golden brown colour like in the image below.
When the pieces are a nice golden brown, remove the pan and let the tofu cool down. Now, the possibilities are endless. Make up a marinade for your tofu. Be creative. Soak the tofu for at a good three hours minimum. Then, cook away.
The video below goes into better detail. Check it out and hit the ‘Like’ button if the video is at least somewhat helpful.
