There has—to my knowledge—never existed a food more polemic, more evocative of outrage and love alike than the off-white rectangular prism that currently sits on my cutting board. There’s a little bit of liquid leaking out of the sides, and it kind of smells like crayons.
Did you cringe? Salivate in delight? By now you must know I’m discussing everyone’s favorite block of beans, tofu. I’ve frozen, thawed, chopped, sliced, cured, sautéed, and baked enough of the stuff in my day to tell you if you’re not on the Soy Express, you’re just not cooking it right.
98% of all soy produced in the United States goes toward feeding livestock. Humans eat the rest. Some of that soy finds itself in mass-produced baked goods, serving as a better and cheaper dairy alternative. Some of it contributes to the production of soy sauce, if you’ll believe me. But the rest squeezes into small, boxy packages and finds its way to the part of the supermarket with the least foot traffic.
Are you allergic to soy? Stop reading. There’s plenty of textured wheat protein for you elsewhere.
In the supermarket is where preparation truly begins. One immediately has a choice to make: silken, firm, or extra firm? Personally, the texture of beached jellyfishes isn’t my style. If you want to make tofu right—so right that your roommates ask you when you’re baking up a new batch next—your success story starts with extra-firm.
You need a tofu that bites back. Like the Nathan’s and Hebrew Nationals and Bubbas that haunt the sleep paralysis episodes of seasoned vegans everywhere, tofu deserves to be prepared into something truly worth sinking your teeth into.
Step two—cutting up the block of tofu—is where the weak-willed falter. It’s nevertheless true that some people just aren’t used to eating geometrically-sound objects. Pulled pork sandwiches aren’t known for their exacting specifications. Tofu is different; it’s cubes all the way down. Rectangular prisms if you’re feeling fancy. If you’re faced with a squadron of somewhat-moist, beige-colored (and smelling) dominoes, you’ve done it correctly.
It’s not enough to have simply cut up your extra-firm block of beans, however. Texture is tantamount to taste in tofu, so pop those bad boys in the freezer overnight. Why frozen tofu? It’s meatier. No, it’s not plagiarism. It’s less of an obsessive ex situation and more of a we-can-do-better mindset.
There’s nothing like the smell of frozen tofu cubes in the morning. With a little sauce, a little cornstarch for crispiness, and a nice, hot oven on 350 for thirty minutes (flipping once halfway through), you might just have some delicious protein squares on your hands.
Cooking is an experimental art, and there is no better lump of wet clay to practice on than tofu. Which, coincidentally, initially smells and feels like wet clay. But when it comes out of the oven, it’s clear that tofu is exactly what you make it—no more, no less.