Hey everyone, I've been trying to make a couple of vegetarian meals every week to cut down on the amount of meat that I consume. I tried making Tofu for the first time last night and it turned out pretty well. I chopped it into squares, squeezed out all the water (holy fucking shit there's a lot of water in tofu) and tossed it in some olive oil, soy sauce, garlic powder, ginger, and some corn starch. Baked it in the oven until it crisped up and it turned out pretty well I thought. Ate it with a simple vegetable stir fry.
Turns out there's a thing called a tofu press? That seems like it would expedite the entire process since most of the prep was in squeezing out the five gallons of water from the block of tofu. Anyone got any suggestions for a solid one to get?
Also if anyone wants to share some good vegetarian/vegan recipes with tofu it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Edit* God damn you motherfuckers love yourselves some tofu. Thanks for all the great tips everyone, this will definitely guide me in my tofu journey.
Now there's some fucking pro tips. Glad to know I was essentially pressing it correctly. I used cutting boards and a cast iron pan. I'll definitely try using a dish towel instead of paper towels next time, it killed me how wasteful that made it.
What temperature do you have the pan on when dry frying it? A medium or high heat? Am I at risk of burning it doing that?
I usually do a medium heat, but honestly tofu is one of those weird things that is pretty hard to burn. It barely gets golden as you dry fry. Especially at first while it's moist you can have it pretty hot without too much risk if you're in a hurry. Of course, I use an electric stove, so it's not quite like the heat you can get with a wok burner or hot gas stove.
Gotcha. So treat it kind of like mushrooms where you want high heat to cook out all of the water effectively.