A Primer on Tofu

Are you trying to cut back on how much meat, poultry, or seafood you eat? Many people are experimenting with a flexitarian diet, and enjoying more vegetarian meals for the health benefits, or to cut back on runaway grocery store prices.

Or maybe you're interested in tofu because you'd like to replace meat, poultry, or seafood with a plant-based product, because you want to reduce your saturated fat or cholesterol intake. Maybe you want to hack your health by eating 30 different fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, grains, and legumes a week.

I teach an online cooking class, and sometimes, students have a soy allergy, or they just say "Nope!" to cooking with tofu. But some students are just...intrigued by tofu. They've had it at an Asian restaurant, and they're curious about how they might work tofu into their menu.

Regardless of your motivations, if you'd like to eat more healthfully and save money while you do so, I encourage you to keep reading this primer on tofu!

I’ve been a fan of tofu since the mid-90s. I use Mori-Nu’s tofu to replace eggs in desserts and entrees, and as a replacement for heavy cream in appetizers, soups, and entrees, from sweet potato pie to tomato Madras soup, to pasta with asparagus and peas in lemon cream sauce and methi matar malai, to deviled eggs and egg salads. (My kids have joked for years that I should be a spokesperson for Mori-Nu tofu, because so many of my recipes use their tofu.)

I love Mori-Nu because it’s silken tofu (which means you can puree it, and its texture is smooth, not grainy), and because Mori-Nu has the mildest flavor of any tofu I’ve ever tried. Instead of tasting nutty or beany, its mild flavor tastes almost the same as heavy cream.

Unfortunately, silken tofu doesn’t work well as a replacement for seafood, chicken, or beef. Its texture is similar to the white of a hard-cooked egg, so it’s too delicate to press, and it crumbles easily when you cook it.

Non-silken tofu has a chewier, less delicate texture, which makes it ideal for replacing seafood, chicken, and beef. I’ve found that House tofu is the mildest-flavored water-pack tofu I've found. Like Mori-Nu, its flavor isn't nutty or beany, and it just blends right into any recipe.

I’ve never really gotten into using non-silken tofu, though, because water-packed tofu (regardless of brand) contains too much water to make a useful replacement for meat, fish, or poultry. It crumbles easily, and the texture is too spongy for my taste.

Freezing tofu is an effective way to remove water, and results in a texture that’s remarkably meat-like. However, I don't have patience to wait a couple of weeks to get a seafood-like texture, let alone a month of freezing to get a chicken-like texture.

To complicate matters further, if your tofu stays in the freezer past six weeks, the textural quality begins to decline. After a few months, the texture is more like ground beef (which can be useful, but wasn’t always the texture I wanted). Keeping track of which tofu is ready to be eaten, which tofu hasn’t been in the freezer long enough, and which tofu needs to be eaten immediately was a hassle.

On top of this, House tofu is water-packed, which means it’s perishable. (In contrast, Mori-Nu tofu is aseptic-packed, so it lasts for months in the pantry or fridge). Calculating how much water-pack tofu to buy in order to freeze it and use it up, then draining and freezing and waiting and defrosting, made incorporating water-pack tofu into meals unfun. And the nearest store that carried House tofu was a half-hour drive, so I focused on ways to incorporate Mori-Nu tofu into my meals.

Recently my grocery store began carrying House tofu, and this inspired me to spend some time on the ‘net searching for an alternative to freezing tofu. Manually pressing tofu instead of freezing sounded effective (if messy), but I didn’t want to expand my carbon footprint by pressing tofu using paper towels. I have a small house and an even small kitchen, so the idea of buying and storing kitchen towels to use for this purpose didn’t appeal to me, either.

Then I stumbled across tofu presses, and bought this one. It sounds melodramatic to say “This tofu press has changed my life,” but seriously, it has. Thanks to the addition of tofu to my meals, I’m able to reduce the amount of seafood, eggs, and dairy I consume. This benefits the environment, but because tofu is considerably less expensive than seafood, eggs, cheese, yogurt, etc., it also benefits my bottom line. And the protein content of tofu makes it filling, which means I’m less hungry between meals.

How does a tofu press work? It’s simple: You put your tofu in the press, snap the lid on, and put it in the fridge for anywhere from 30 minutes to 6 hours (or overnight). The press pushes out and collects water from the tofu. When you're ready to use your tofu, you remove it from the press. It’s that easy! The press is easy to hand wash, and it's dishwasher safe. Best of all, the final product is fantastic—while it’s not quite as chewy as frozen tofu, the texture is remarkably similar to seafood or chicken.

One other advantage of pressing tofu is that doing so makes it easier to cook. With much of the water pressed out, it’s less crumbly. You can slice it and marinade it (as I do in the recipe I'll share next week), bake it, or cook it in sauce. Either way, the smaller you slice it, the more marinade or sauce it takes up. If you prefer, you can leave it as a block, because House tofu is so mild you don’t need to mask the flavor.

I'll post the recipe for Thai Mushroom and Tofu Salad next week, based on pressed House tofu. If you'd like to add in more tofu to your eating pattern, you've got time to pick up a press, find House tofu, and get ready to enjoy a salad that's delicious and filling, and it's good for you and the environment, too!

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