Today, we are going on a cooking trip, or depending on your mileage, on the beginning of a journey.
The inspiration for this article is a shocking yet shockingly trivial realization that I had based on multiple everyday experiences. I had always thought that younger generations are in general more interculturally aware. Partly, this is due to the proliferation of the Internet and globalization, both of which should make information exchange easier.
However, I completely neglected the opposite factor: The younger you are, the less total experience you have accumulated. You are also more confined to wherever you grow up and may have limited access to foreign things. So in hindsight, it makes sense that not everyone has eaten and appreciated tofu before.
Now, if you expected anything too deep out of this website, I must sorely disappoint you. Today, we are really just exploring an accessible approach to the concept of tofu. If you are already experienced with it, you can stop here and read about an alternative topic.
If, however, you would say Tofu is foreign to you, or you dislike it but are willing to give it another chance – basically for anyone under the tofu-curious umbrella – this article will attempt to give you the lowest possible barrier of entry into curd culture. The author has spent a long time in front of such barriers themselves.
Tofu (豆腐) is basically cheese (奶酪) made out of soy milk (although it does not have to taste like soy milk, just like cheese does not have to taste like milk).1
From the cheese comparison, we can directly infer the most important lesson for today: Tofu is not vegetarian meat. In fact, in the East-Asian cuisines that use it, you will commonly find it as part of non-vegetarian meals, just like you wouldn’t shy away from combining meat and cheese in a Philly cheesesteak.
On the other hand, if your aim is plant-based cooking, then tofu is in fact an awesome ingredient, which is why in non-Asian countries, it has been mostly marketed to people who avoid meat, but as a meat replacement rather than a cheese replacement. This confusion is the root cause of many pitfalls on the way to curd catharsis.
In the following, we will build two bridges that will nevertheless get you there. The first is how to buy the right tofu. The second is an absolutely bullet-proof way to make a tasty dish using tofu.
Depending on your country, you may find tofu in your normal grocery store or in the Asian specialty store. In both cases, look in the refrigerated aisle. Sometimes, the Asian store can give you a better quality. Sometimes, both sell the same brands.
As you would expect from a cheese-like product, there are many ways to make tofu. A chief way to distinguish them is through their water content or softness. On the one end of the spectrum is the very soft kind that resembles custard or jelly in consistency. On the other end, you have extra super firm tofu that is as chewy and heavy as a dense bread. You can find a more detailed overview on serious eats.
Since we are beginners though, let us navigate this paralysis of choice in the safe way: The very soft kind falls apart easily. The firm kind is stable, but the taste will usually suffer. While you can make both of these work in a variety of dishes regardless, for beginners, the medium kind is recommended. Do not press it later as that will just turn it into firm tofu again!
Now that you have purchased tofu, we are going to prepare it. There are actually three approaches I am going to suggest. You can pick the one that seems easiest for you.
The ideal way to approach foreign food is to first go to a fitting foreign restaurant and tasting it cooked by people who grew up eating it. But not everyone has access to such restaurants, and choosing the right one can be challenging as well. So for this guide, we will skip this step.2
The second approach is to add tofu to dishes you already know how to make well. For beginners, frying tofu is not recommended. It requires some practice to get it to taste good when fried. Instead, it is easier to add it as an extra ingredient to savory soupy, or stewy dishes. Drain the package, cut into cubes and cook it in the sauce for a few minutes so that it can absorb the flavors. Do not put more tofu than other ingredients.
Some traditionally non-tofu dishes that should work:
or anything resembling the above. As long as there is savory flavor that can be infused, you are good to go.
The above way of starting from a comfort dish may be helpful for some. However, others may be more intimidated by the fusion aspect or lack the experience in preparing stew-like dishes in general. For you, here is the third, lowest-barrier approach: Japanese curry with tofu.
The key advantage of Japanese curry is that it is usually made using curry roux, which is basically a premixed soup cube3 that is widely available in Asian grocery stores around the world. Look for brands like Golden Curry, Vermont Curry, or Torokeru Curry. You can probably also buy them online. These products were perfected to please picky children and adults for generations. Likely, they will also please you even if they are foreign to you, just like ramen is tasty to most people.
To prepare them, get some potatoes, some carrots, optionally other vegetables, optionally meat4, cut everything into cubes, and proceed according to the instruction on the package, which will usually tell you to
The only thing that matters is to get the ratio of curry roux to water correctly. For myself and Golden Curry, I usually use two roux cubes and 1.25 US cups (300 ml) of water. If this is enough fluid to cook your ingredients, you are good. It will give two servings so you can eat leftovers later if you are by yourself.
This dish tastes best in a bowl over some rice. If you have trouble cooking rice, it is also tasty with noodles. Just mix them in the sauce! Bon appetit!
Whichever approach of the three you choose, or if you got inspired to do something completely unrelated, I hope you got one step closer to enjoying a food that you did not have access to before. Having more food options in your life can only be enriching, right?
I want to close this article by sharing my favourite tofu dish: Mapo Tofu. I might write another article just about this one.
Happy curdling!
Because of this similarity, if cheese is a difficult food for you, you can just replace the word tofu by paneer and use this article as a cheese guide. ↩︎
If you do have restaurants in your vicinity and money to spare, I nevertheless encourage you to give them all a try. Remember that it is okay to go to restaurants by yourself. ↩︎
It is true that this is a food industry product with many additives. If you usually try to avoid such products, this may make you uneasy. But since our goal is to conquer a new food ingredient, using this one stepping stone to unlock a myriad of new healthy dishes is perfectly acceptable and healthy! ↩︎
Careful in case of lean proteins like chicken breast, shrimps, or white fish: These will turn dry if you cook them too long. Add them later in the cooking process. ↩︎