How To Make Tofu Taste Delicious

Here are four easy elements that will transform your tofu cooking skills

Why do I keep insisting that people learn to love tofu?

Unless you have an intolerance to soy or your doctor or naturopath has advised against it, it eating whole (unprocessed) soy in the form of tofu, tempeh, edamame beans, or soy milk (more on those others later) is a great protein addition to your diet.

I’m not here to talk about all the nutritional benefits of soy, those are easy to Google.

What I am here to tell you is that tofu shouldn’t taste like cardboard. It’s all about a few simple techniques.

What does tofu need to taste good?

1. Time to marinate

When I hear people complain about tofu lacking in flavor, I ask if they would just throw a chicken in a pan with oil and then serve it.

It needs to soak up some flavor!

Tofu on its own is very flat. It takes on the flavor that you add to it.

If you can marinade your tofu longer, even better. Sometimes I only have an hour and that’s okay.

If you can put it in your fridge overnight, covered by the marinade in a container making sure it’s all coated), that is your best option.

Here’s a great post on marinating tofu.

2. A dipping sauce or sauce to coat

Tofu needs a saucy friend to go with it unless you’re a veteran like me, as I love it even plain.

If it’s already been marinated, having a sauce to dip it in, or to coat it in (like in a stir-fry) is your best bet.

Easy delicious sauces are BBQ sauce, peanut sauce, sweet chili sauce, or simple Korean influenced garlic soy-sesame sauce.

3. Good texture

Texture is an individual preference, but if you’re just starting to work with tofu, I highly recommend the firm or extra firm. Unless you’re making a tofu scramble, you could use a medium texture.

A lot of people will press the water out of the tofu first, to release some of the moisture and make it simpler to cook with, but it’s a step I often avoid. I’ve been teaching simple cooking for years and I don’t want to add extra layers of complexity for beginners!

Hard tofu can be cut into cubes, sticks (think tofu fries), triangles, or broken roughly into chunks.

Unless you love the soft jiggly tofu, stick to the hard stuff. I love softer tofu when I go to a Korean restaurant, but I don’t make it myself at home.

4. A good accompaniment

Just like omnivores who serve chicken, fish or beef with something, tofu should go on the side of something, unless you’re having it as finger food.

I like it added to stir-fries (like in this simple 20-minute stir-fry) and bowls (like this peanut tofu bowl), and I’ll make a sandwich with it too. The options for stir-fries, bowls, and sandwiches are limitless!

5. Good tools (pans)

— stay tuned for a post tomorrow!

Takeaway

Make sure your tofu has a lot of opportunities to be flavorful. Marinate it as long as you can, have a great sauce to go along with it, and add it to one of your dishes where you would normally add meat.

Working with tofu takes a bit of practice, but after teaching for so many years, I saw very few people not become tofu lovers. It’s all in how you flavor it, and what you eat it with.

There’s a lot more to know about making delicious tofu, and some of it comes down to the simple tools in your kitchen.

Do you have a favorite tofu tip or recipe you want to share? Please post it in the comments!

Tomorrow I’ll talk about my favorite tools! Sign-up for email updates to make sure you don’t miss a post.