Tofu - How do you cook it?
 

How do you cook your tofu?

I love the soft tofu in Korean tofu soup.

Oh, so many ways. I bake it, fry it, sautee it, dry it and then give it one of those treatments. I serve it in salads, omelettes and on and on. Tofu can be served in nearly every imaginable way. I use it every day in something or another, when I'm home anyway.

Tofu typically is part of the asian diet.

The soft variey is typically used for soups and some stir frys which tend to be heavy in sauce.

The hard kind is normally used in Laksa or vegetable stir frys.

I have used the soft variery to make grandma's beancurd or "mapo tofu" as well as asian soups.

You have to be careful not to cut the soft variety too small or it might break up into too small pieces.

My favorites:

mixed with the premade ma po tofu mixes from the Asian market (very very high in sodium, but tasty)

extra firm, cut in cubes and fried in butter

coated in cornstarch and deep fried

I also like to buy the pre-fried frozen deep fried pieces (which I can only find at the Asian markets) because no matter how hard I try I'm just not that good at deep-frying tofu.

Wow, after reviewing my list, all of these are incredibly unhealthy!

Plain tofu in a soup (such as diced in miso shiru) is probably how I least like it.

I always have three-packs of aburaage in the freezer (the ones crhptic mentions) as it's easy to slice from this and add to pretty much any vegetable dish you could make in a wok as well as making inarizushi skins with (another Korean favourite!)

But, if you have in mind commercially sold tofu blocks, then the question "how do you cook it?" for me always involves the process of wrapping up the block, putting a weight on top and leaving it to drain for at least an hour to firm up before I will do any actual cooking with it. This way it won't break up as ONLY_no_One describes.

Amongst the many, many ways I cook tofu there includes making it into fish burgers, ganmodoki and even adding it to matzoh balls (I don't use chicken fat).
I still haven't learned to make decent agedofu though.

Hiyayakko I'd never try without the very freshest tofu, but you don't really cook with it.

I tend to prefer the firm texture tofu - the soft stuff just doesn't sit right texture-wise with me.

Standard way to cook: marinate in a sauce (varies.. black bean paste is always good! anything with lots of flavour). Sautee with vegetables and noodles.

Unoriginal I know :)

Actually, when I said 'fried tofu' I was referring more to the chunks, pre-fried and then frozen...something like this or this or this. But I just googled the aburaage and it looks yummy too!

Speaking of inarizushi skins - amazingly, I found a can of it at the grocery store this week - the regular, mainstream grocery store (albeit on the "Asian food" aisle). I haven't used it yet, but I had to buy it just because I was so shocked to find it there.

Removing the extra water is a very important step. If I forget to do it ahead of time I will take a cheesecloth, wrap the tofu up, and squeeze the heck out of it several times. That will work in a pinch :)

Soondubu jjigae 순두부 찌 Is one thing I do with it.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/40726522@N02/3985505092/

I like to marinate the xtra firm version in tamari, ginger and scallions. Then we use it for stir fry or bake it for a snack.

Wirelessly posted (Nokia N97 / Palm TX: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows 98; PalmSource/Palm-D050; Blazer/4.3) 16;320x448)

ma po is the way to go... !!!

Disgusting stuff although I find it very useful for baiting mouse traps with.

My personal favorite cooking method: the bin....

Taiwanese Stinky tofu...a guilty and stinky pleasure...

Any place in the midwest we can try the stinky tofu? Where would you recommend?

I like my tofu cook this way
http://walkingtower.blogspot.com/200...kwa-adobo.html