Choosing Tofu for Cooking and Recipes
Select the Best Best Bean Curd for Your Sweet and Savoury Dishes
Jan 31, 2007
Tofu is still a mystery to most people. Most problems with flavour and texture stem from choosing the wrong variety for the dish or cooking it in an inappropriate way. A slimy texture or improper marinade can turn some peoples' palates off of tofu forever. Start off on the right foot with selecting and purchasing the proper type of tofu for your meal.
Step 1: Choosing Tofu
- Soft, silken, medium or firm?
The expanding variety of tofu at most supermarkets makes choosing the right type of tofu for a dish increasingly complicated.
First, assess your recipe: what type of dish are you creating?
Desserts, Smoothies, Mousses, or Puddings.
Choose: soft tofu.
- Soft tofu is sold under the guise of “soft silken”, “silken”, or “smooth” tofu. Any of these will do for blending, as firmer tofu tends to taste gritty when blended.
- Silken dessert tofus (flavoured and sweetened) make desserts even easier; almond flavour is highly recommended.
Main Dish Recipes
Choose: firm or extra-firm tofu that can be cubed, diced, or grated.
- Firmer tofu is less likely to crumble upon slicing and dicing and will suck up marinades better than softer varieties.
- Use firm firm tofu for Grilled Tofu or Buffalo Tofu.
Paneer and Meat Substitutes
Choose: firm tofu.
- To create a clever meaty texture, freeze firm tofu; thaw it and crumble into dishes.
Mashed or Crumbled Tofu; Ricotta Substitute
Choose: medium or medium-firm tofu.
- Recipes where tofu is mashed or crumbled include vegan lasagna or scrambled tofu
- Medium tofu will crumble if handled too much, and does not really slice cleanly
- Crumble tofu to hide it in a recipe or make it cleverly disappear
- Mash tofu to use as a substitute for ricotta cheese.
Specialty Tofu Dishes
New varieties of tofu make meal preparation exciting and new. Check our their packaging for recipe ideas that mean less work in the kitchen for you! Try:
- Smoked tofu
- Herbed tofu
- Pre-marinated tofu
- Dessert tofu.
Nutritional Considerations
Firmer tofu is more concentrated soy; so firmer tofu has more calcium, protein, and iron per brick than the softer stuff. Soft or silken tofu doesn’t really carry much nutritional value, as its water content is higher.
Step 2: Storing Tofu
Tofu storage need not be a tricky matter. Like soy milk, tofu will go bad fairly quickly if not stored properly, despite a long expiry date.
- Keep tofu in the fridge whether opened or not
- For tofu that comes in water, store in an air-tight container with a bit of fresh water, changed daily
- Tofu that comes in a vacuum pack does not need to be stored with water, but seal in an air-tight container
- Open tofu is best consumed within a day or two
- Tofu is bad when it develops a beany “off” smell. The edges may start to yellow or brown. Discard "off" tofu.
- Tofu packaged in a vacuum-sealed bagstends to last longer once opened than the kind packed in water.
Long-term Storage
With an open package of tofu and no plans to use it, consider draining the tofu and freezing it in an airtight container. To use in a recipe, simply defrost the tofu in the fridge overnight. The texture will be spongier (some say "meatier") than fresh tofu; an attribute actually preferred by some cooks.
For more tofu recipes and how-to's, see:
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