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.
Tofu protip: Leave it to marinate in a sauce to give it even more flavor. My fav thing to do is buy an artificially flavored beef or chicken flavored powder, mix it with a lil water, soy sauce, any other Asian sauces (fish, hoison, rice vinegar, teriyaki, chili garlic, sriracha, chili oil, etc), garlic, onion, ginger, onion and garlic powder, fresh chillis, and let it sit a couple hours/overnight. Follow the rest of the things you did before, add a ton of veggies and make a banging meal.
I can't recommend getting an artificially flavored beef or chicken flavored powder enough. It makes all my veggie recipes still hit and not miss the taste of meat.
Nice. It seems like getting an intimate knowledge of sauces is invaluable when working with tofu, haha. I'll have to look into those powders, I may or may not like them though, artificial meat flavorings have been pretty miss for me in the past.
Hopefully you can find one you rock with. I heard McKay's is good but besides Amazon, I can't find it. I have some that I found at my local Asian market, which is dope.
But yes, cooking is all about throwing shit in that belongs from the general culture group and hoping it works. Know what spices is popping with what culture and you can create something good off the fly. It's always dope doing a recipe but throwing stuff together and keeping tendencies in mind can create some fun stuff. Explore and don't be afraid to pick up a spice for one recipe. It might come in handy later!