Sep 10 2008
Pan-Fried Tofu Marinade and Process
Michael and I spent the evening yesterday cleaning out the kitchen, doing laundry and taking out trash. My personal cleaning project was the fridge. I discovered some moldy cucumbers in our crisper and the liquid on my fingers made me decide to clean out our crisper drawers and clean the shelves in the fridge. It looks so empty now - just fresh produce, pickled veggies (daikon? okra?), jam, peanut-butter, booze and all sorts of spreads, dressings and marinades. It’s really enlightening to see.
Then I decided to get a head start on dinner tonight by draining, marinating and pan-frying some tofu to be added to this veganyumyum recipe.
My marinade for the tofu went as such:
- Soy Sauce (or Tamari if you’re eating gluten-free, or Braggs if you’re a health nut) - probably a cup or so.
- Mirin (or rice wine) - probably a quarter to a half of a cup
- Sesame Oil - a tablespoon or two
- Garlic - two cloves, chopped or sliced, whatever you prefer. Make it easy to pick the garlic off the tofu so you can fry the tofu up without garlic burning everywhere. Or just use garlic powder.
- Ginger powder - maybe a teaspoon or two, I really eyeballed this.
As with every generic recipe I give, taste the quantities! Maybe you want more soy sauce, more mirin. This recipe makes a tiny amount of marinade for a brick of tofu, so feel free to mess about with it.
After I drained the tofu, I attempted to cut long, thin slices the whole length of the block. I did okay. Then I used a medium star cookie cutter and a small snowflake cookie cutter and cut out shapes. The leftover scraps I just cut into fry-able pieces and I layered them in a container, spooning marinade on top of each. I came back a couple of times during the hour or so I let the tofu sit in the marinade to spoon the marinade out from the bottom and drizzle it on the tofu at the top.
Then I pulled out a pretty small metal skillet (not non-stick although that would certainly work, and not cast-iron). I put some canola oil in that bad boy, and started throwing tofu in the pan (I shook the garlic and any extra marinade off the tofu before it went in the pan). Keep the piece of tofu moving in the oil for a minute or so and it won’t stick as badly. If it does stick, just scratch at the pan with a fork (unless you’re using a non-stick pan) and get the tasty bits off , it’s no big deal. After a round or two, each new piece of tofu will sort of de-glaze the pan, so these pieces won’t stick. I like smaller skillets because I tend to cook a few pieces at a time so I can control the stickiness of the pan. Make sure you keep a thin layer of oil in your pan, as well.
Everyone likes their tofu cooked differently. I tend to keep mine a little “raw” in the middle. I like the crisp outside and creamy inside you get at a medium, medium-high setting. If you cook at a pretty low temperature, the tofu will probably take a couple minutes on each side to cook through. This gives you a chewier product, but it doesn’t crumble the way “raw” in the middle tofu does.
Anyway, I don’t know if I’ll be mixing this into the pasta (which we’re making with organic low-fat coconut milk, organic broccoli and peas and organic, whole-wheat rotini because we are that pretentious) or serving it on the side. I intended the cookie-cutter shapes to be cute on the side, but some of them got messed up and maybe they’d look just as cute on top of the pasta. In any case, hopefully it will be tasty noms.
Note: the tofu used was a brick of extra-firm, floating in water tofu.