Jun 11 2008
Failed Recipes
Last night was supposed to be our night for sweet chili lime tofu and kale, a recipe from VeganYumYum that I’ve linked to probably a million times already over the past week. So, after heading to the grocery store and dropping three dollars (!) on extra firm tofu (the cheap brand they carry doesn’t make extra firm for some reason, next time I’m driving the half hour to Trader Joes), Michael set about making the dish by starting some rice and draining the tofu.
For people who have not messed about with tofu before, there are two basic kinds of tofu. One is a brick floating in water, one is a brick inside a paper box. Trader Joes brand tofu is the first kind, mori-nu is the second. Generally, the second kind is referred to as silken tofu - it’s softer, wetter, smoother. Not so great for frying because it doesn’t hold up, but it’s fantastic for replacing things like cheese in stuffed shells, yogurt in smoothies, etc.
Before you can fry the first kind of tofu, you have to drain the water out of the container, and then drain the tofu itself. It’s like a little sponge. I like to do this quickly, so I’ll wrap the brick in a kitchen towel and gently squeeze it in my hands, rotating it so I squeeze the brick evenly. The better way to drain the brick itself is to wrap it in a kitchen towel, set it between two plates and set something heavy on the top plate and just walk away for twenty minutes.
So Michael drained the tofu, cut it exactly the way called for in the recipe and set it in our well-seasoned twelve-inch cast iron pan. The tofu barely fit in our pan, although the recipe calls for a ten inch pan.
The tofu stuck. It stuck everywhere. Michael tried to add oil after the fact and it didn’t help because the tofu was sticking to the bits of itself that were stuck on the pan.
Let me just recommend to anyone trying that recipe, or anyone cooking tofu anywhere… put oil in the pan. Spray it with cooking oil, don’t just set the tofu in the pan. I understand that this recipe wasn’t really supposed to be fried in oil because that would mess with the tofu taking up the sauce. Forget about it… spray your pan with cooking oil if you try this recipe. Otherwise you’ll end up eating potato chips and veggie burgers while staring at a pan full of very sad, very stuck, very crumbled tofu pieces.
I’m not trying to criticize the recipe, obviously it worked for her. Maybe she has mad skills or a fantastic pan, or something Michael and I don’t have. I’m just offering our experience as a warning so that you can error on the side of caution, if you wish.
Personally, draining and then marinating tofu, pan frying it in some shallow oil and calling it a night has always worked best for me.
I think it would’ve worked fine in a Teflon pan. The “well-seasoned cast iron pan” is obviously just too unpredictable — you know how much I’ve oiled and baked and re-oiled those stupid pans to get them seasoned just right.
That’s been my general experience with cast iron anyway. Most of the time they’re great, but sometimes you’ll have minor problems that become major problems if you do something stupid like oh, say, try to fry tofu without oil.
Sigh.
ugh! I had this happen once with a hard anodized pan that worked well for most things I would use teflon for (say: eggs) and it was a horrible, horrible mess. Doh!
I saw a comment on VYY, “I wasn’t very good at dry frying the tofu- this was my first time using this technique and I think i should have used a different pan.” I don’t think you guys are alone.