Tofu Experiences?

Noozan

You can make your own tofu mega cheaply with soya beans. A bit time consuming but well worth it.

Soak soya beans overnight. Rinse and cover with cold water. Put into blender or blitz with a stick blender. Strain through muslin bag and give the bag a good squeeze to get all the fluid out. Put in pan and bring to the boil. At this point, you can use the liquid as soya milk.

For soft tofu: Allow soya milk to cool for a bit (approx 80 degrees ish). Mix gypsum with a little cold water and put into large bowl. Quickly pour over the soya milk DO NOT STIR!! and allow to "set"

For firm tofu: Follow instructions as as soft tofu but have ready a tub with holes in (I have a tupperware tub with holes drilled in it) lined with muslin. Pour tofu in and cover with muslin. Place a plate on top and weigh it down with something heavy. As the water is squeezed out, the tofu firms up. Experiment with the length of time you "press" the tofu until you get a consistency that you like.

* At the soft tofu stage; it's commonly eaten as a chinese dessert flavoured with syrup. Basic syrup is just sugar dissolved in hot water but sometimes other flavourings like ginger etc can be added.

Quasar

Good points Noozan. But traditional tofu has to have calcium sulphate added - not sure what it does to it, but it's one of the two basic ingredients together with soya.

se999

Don't have the recipes, but currently travelling and the local chinese does a really nice clear vegetable soup and the tofu is just plain cubes (not prefried) floating in it, really nice.

The local Thai does fried tofu and vegetables. Where it is a plainish oriental vegetable mix (with lots of chilli) in a clear sauce and added lumps of fried tofu.

I'm going to have a go at recreating both of them soon.

When I cook I sometimes replace paneer with tofu in Indian recipes, as it's an healthier alternative, and works quite well although the taste/texture is different.

odds-n-sods

I make a great hot + sour soup with tofu in - no cooking needed - it goes in last minute to just heat through. My neice also makes spaghetti sauce with it; her uncle didn't know it was a tofu sauce (always swore he'd ever eat it) and tried it; was scoffing down spoonfuls of it until she told him it was tofu!

Noozan

Quasar wrote: »

Good points Noozan. But traditional tofu has to have calcium sulphate added - not sure what it does to it, but it's one of the two basic ingredients together with soya.

Hi Quaser. I use gypsum in my tofu recipe - gypsum is the common name for calcium sulphate. It's used as a coagulant to make the tofu set. You can also use nigari which is a seaweed extract but it's quite hard to find it for sale anywhere.

IHateDida

Can anyone tell me how you make tofu go a bit chewy like they do in Chinese takeaways - despite having used it in stirfries it still has the texture of egg custard when I cook it! What am I doing wrong? I want it to look a bit chewed up and hard-ish on the outside! Thanks!

Noozan

IHateDida wrote: »

Can anyone tell me how you make tofu go a bit chewy like they do in Chinese takeaways - despite having used it in stirfries it still has the texture of egg custard when I cook it! What am I doing wrong? I want it to look a bit chewed up and hard-ish on the outside! Thanks!

It needs to be firm before you start cooking with it. Follow the above recipe for firm tofu and then slice it into strips for stir frying. If you want a chewy spongy like texture, deep fry small pieces until they're slightly coloured and puffed up, then continue using in stir fry recipe.

If it's egg custardy to start with, it won't firm up anymore during the cooking process as there's too much moisture in it.

IHateDida

Thankyou! Will have a go at deep frying the pack I have in the fridge tonight although I'm a bit of a fire risk with a saucepan of hot oil!!!!!! (might try and fry it in shallow oil!). I think I can see a disaster coming on!!!!

Thanks for your advice - I luuurve that spongy texture of chinese takeaway tofu!

badkitti

ihatedida - you have to use the right sort of tofu to start with, depending on what results you want.

I'm quite lucky in that the chinese supermarket in leeds sells pre deep friend tofu, that you can just add to the wok.

morganlefay

I have always wantd to use tofu but get confused in the shops. What is 'silken' tofu ? and how is smoked tofu different ? I am never going to make my own I'm afraid, but when I go out to buy some I always come back empty handed because I'm too mean to buy something I'm not sure about and there seem to be several different sorts........