You know when you go to an Asian restaurant and order a stir-fry with tofu, the tofu comes in chunks? I’m guessing they’re marinated and fried first, since sometimes the outside is a little chewy and the inside is nice and soft.
How the heck do you do that at home? I’ve tried before, and my tofu always just crumbles up. I’ve tried with soft, medium, and firm tofu before. I’ve tried weighting it down for a couple hours so it loses moisture. I finally gave up several years ago. But today at the grocery store, the tofu called to me, so I bought it. Mori-nu firm tofu in an aseptic pack.
Because we don’t do anything special but get extra firm tofu, chop it up into cubes, and sautee it. You do have to sautee it for a long while, though, until the outsides are browned and crispy. And we rarely even have one crumble.
You could deep-dry I guess but that takes away some of the healthiness.
The Mori-nu is still going to be too soft. You need extra-firm Chinese-style tofu–the refrigerated kind that comes packed in water. When you have that you can weight it for half an hour, although I don’t bother, since extra firm is already pretty dry. Then, toss the cut up pieces in corn starch and stir fry them in a non-stick pan in a couple of tablespoons of the oil of your choice. (I use canola.) Add the chunks to your stir fry at the last minute, just to warm them through.
If you don’t want to fry or sautee it (which is basically the same thing) then freeze it.
Basically, after some initial draining, slice the tofu up into thick strips (for later cubing), wrap up the strips in saran-wrap, freeze them overnight, and then defrost (or microwave to make it faster) and drain: then cube. The freezing will make the firm tofu even firmer (and you can keep frozen tofu for a while as long as it is protected from freezerburn. If you’re pressed for time, you can freeze the entire tub too after getting it home from the supermarket, though you should drain the surrounding water out first and then re-saranwrap up for holes (again, to prevent freezerburn).
Squeezing is a good way to drain tofu, but it often will squish it too much to make good cubes if you get too into squishing out every last dro pof water. If cubes is your goal, avoid it and just drain without much squishing (just a simple, not too heavy, weighted pan is fine, no need to squash it).
Most Asian places deep fry their tofu, even if just a little. Remember that frying, as long as there is plenty of water still in the food through the entire process, is not in fact all that unhealthy. And tofu contains a LOT of water. Just a short dunk in the fry, breaded or unbreaded, will give that chewy/soft dichotomy you are probably used to.
Ah yes, I didn’t catch that part of the OP. Yes, you need to get this kind of tou,. I don’t use the corn starch myself, though, but I do have a Chinese cook at home so maybe that helps.
Hmm am I screwed with the Mori-nu? This is what I bought. [ed: OK, after posting this, I see more replies. It seems I need Chinese tofu. Any brand names? I’m sure I’m pretty limited as to what I can get in this town. And what can I do with the mori-nu, seeing as I have it?]
I don’t mind frying it. I’m not doing the tofu thing for health. I’m doing it because even though I’m a firm believer of eating meat, I happen to looooove tofu. When I get it at a restaurant, that is. As I documented in the OP, I can’t make it to save my life.
It’s going to go into spring rolls. Not the fried kind, the rubbery rice paper kind stuffed with rice noodles and basil and mint and all those good things.
Is deep frying the way to go? Or pan frying? Do you marinate it?
Yes, by all means, come on over. Bring some yummy Indian recipes with you too, I’ll be your slave. We’ve been dying for some good high-spice food over here at the Athena household. One drawback of living in a small town is that you can’t just run over to the local Ethiopian/Indian/Vietnamese/<insert yummy food here> place when you get a hankering for it.
I know, I lived in MI, remember? Not the UP, but I do know huge portions of it are rural. Part of the reason I moved out of a small town was so I could have more ethnic diversity in both foods and festivals.
Got no recipes on me, but even if I did, you can’t even get spices and stuff up there, can you? If you can, let me know, and I’ll send a couple of my favorites your way.
Actually, I don’t think I’d have much problems getting the spices up here. There’s a co-op that carries a lot of ethnic herbs/spices/groceries. It’s the fresh stuff that’s hard to get. I can’t just run down to the Indian grocer and pick up fresh galanga every day. Surprisingly, there’s one grocery store that will occasionally carry stuff like this, but there’s no guarantee it’ll be there when I want it.
So yeah, if you’ve got some good recipes, I’d love a few.
Mori-nu is only good for soups, in my opinion. It’s also used in recipes where you blend it as a replacement for dairy in puddings and sauces, etc. I never do that, though, because it always tastes pasty to me.
so maybe that helps.