(Recipe) Tofu with Chili Glaze

I like tofu - but only certain ways.

Friends in California, I bet you're nodding with me. Sis-in-law in Utah, I bet you're laughing and thinking, "She thinks I'll get this bunch to eat tofu!" And I wouldn't blame any longtime meat-eaters for rejecting it the first time they tried cooking with it themselves. Tofu can be awful.

Specifically, I cannot abide by slimy crumbs of tofu lolling around my stirfry, looking less like food and more like fallen drywall from the ceiling on my plate. The first hundred or so times I made stirfry with tofu, when I was a young midwestern vegetarian wanna be whose one Chinese restaurant experience didn't include exposure to tofu, I kinda thought that crumbly and sorta bland was just how it was meant to be, and decided I didn't like it - for years.

Since then I've indeed learned that tofu doesn't have to be slimy and crumbly. In fact, in addition to its highly adaptable mild flavor, it turns out it can be chewy and firm and have a "skin" on it that provides the same kind of tooth that meat lovers enjoy on a browned piece of meat. Glory be: tofu doesn't suck!

The trick is to press tofu between paper towels to remove the water content, which helps with its structural integrity in the pan. Browning the tofu in oil (olive works fine, but your final dish happens to be, say, a Thai or Chinese one that would welcome it, peanut oil is also nice) firms it further, and a chili or honeyed glaze seals the deal - the tofu is now firm and toothsome, and holds up to the other ingredients in a stirfry. You can also keep the tofu in slices (below I've cubed it) and cook it in slabs to serve like a tofu steak, but for beginning tofu-eaters, that can be intimidating -- a larger slab-o-tofu's center can still be a little too, well, too much like tofu for some. These smaller cubes add the protein and the tooth but also cook through enough that the slime factor is nil.

I've been playing with this tofu thing this week and monkeying with different sauces, so I'd love to hear your favorites. This Chili glaze, last night's experiment, gave a spicy but nuanced kick to its vegetable friends in the pan.

CHILI GLAZED TOFU

2 t oil
1 package Extra Firm tofu, sliced 1/2" thin

sauce:
4 T vegetable broth or water
1 T cider, balsamic, or rice vinegar (I've experimented with all of these, and always like the result)
2 T honey or syrup
2 T ground fresh chili paste (future post: I'll share a recipe for making your own)
pinch salt

Press the tofu between paper towels for 10 minutes.

Stir all sauce ingredients together in a small bowl.

Cut tofu into 1/2" cubes.

Heat 2 t oil in wok or fry pan until shimmering. Cook tofu until golden brown on bottom, about 6 minutes; turn gently once, and brown next side. Turn again gently to brown each side (this is why you cut the cubes larger, but I really don't worry about being patient enough to cook every single piece on every single side - they stay firm so long as you turn them three times, I've found). Don't turn more than necessary - pieces crumble easily until they're browned.

Turn heat down and slip your sauce ingredients into the pan. Stir gently to coat and let cook until sauce firms to glaze (your tofu will be covered with the sticky, syrupy sauce). Remove from pan and reserve; make your desired stir fry or other dish, and toss tofu in at the end.