How to Cook Fried Tofu

Female Speaker 1: I am going to show you how to fry Tofu. And the Tofu that I have is a firm Tofu. It’s has been marinating in soy sauce, and garlic and freshly grated ginger. Oops! It’s not grated, its whole pieces of ginger, in a little sesame oil. So, Tofu is kind of bland all on its own, so it needs to be marinated. And, I cut it into little triangles; you can do cubes, you can do rectangles, you can do whatever you want. And I am going to fry it in coconut oil; this is unrefined coconut oil. I am kind of picky about what fats I use, and in my cooking classes at Bastyr, we only use a few fats really. And that’s fats that are traditional fats, that people have used for centuries, that don’t tend to go rancid like coconut oil or extra virgin olive oil and butter, of course. Female Speaker 2: Hey Mom, If you are not doing anything today, I was hoping that you could take me… Female Speaker 1: So, we are just going to get the oil nice and, what… Female Speaker 2: …to the karate class today because I have to call Brenda, because we are doing this, been around the cover night, and we got to get our new drummer and all the songs, so… Female Speaker 1: No, I -- you can see I’m not available, sorry. You can absolutely care about yourself. Female Speaker 2: Are you making fried food? Female Speaker 1: Yeah. Female Speaker 2: Nice. Okay, I’ll ask Dad. Female Speaker: Okay, so I’m going to get the heat up nice here, and I can tell actually by put…, not actually setting my hand in hot oil, but I am just putting my hand over it. And, then you need to pat dry this Tofu, because if you got your oil nice and hot which it should be, you don’t want to be putting drippy liquidy stuff in there or it will sputter on your face and burn your eyes out, basically. Okay, that’s great. Alright, I’ll just get this many pieces done. And, your goal is that you want it pretty crispy on the outside. People like it that way, and of course you can get it that way by deep-fat frying it. But you can do that by just browning it to, and it works just fine. So yeah, that oil is nice and hot. Ah, love way that sounds, that’s perfect. And when its nice and hot like that, it doesn’t take very long at all to fry up this Tofu. And, frying it like this gives us a really nice texture that I enjoy a lot. And you can use this fried tofu in salads, you can put it in any stir-fry dishes, or you can just have it on its own. Like with the peanut sauce on it or something like that pretty good, good stuff yeah. And yeah, that’s how fast to goes. See, see that nice crisp texture there? I don’t know if you can see that but, of course you can, we have cameras, you can see it. Of course you can, now it’s beautiful. Okay. Here we go. And Tofu, Tofu is a great vegetarian source of protein. texture there and if you know see that but Female Speaker: Of course he can we have -- you can see as what’s you can? That’s beautiful hey, hey, hey. Female Speaker: Okay, Tofu is a great vegetarian source of protein. There are…you can read a whole lot of stuff about how fabulous Tofu is and soy products are, and you can also read a whole lot of stuff about that its dangerous and that it is going to kill you. And actually, it just a fairly benign thing; some people think that the, the phytoestrogens in the Tofu help with menopause, and hot flashes and, that could be…hasn’t worked for me so far, but that could be. I need to turn the heat back up just a little bit there. See it should go really fast, and the way to get it to really fast like this, is having that fat in your skillet at just the right temperature. And I like using the cast iron skillet because it holds heat in so well. This looks so good. Okay, so I have most of this pounded Tofu fried. I am going to keep finishing it, but you’ve seen how it’s done. Really easy, you just put a little coconut oil in there, brown it on both sides, and then, and there it is. And, it has a really beautiful golden colour and nice texture this way, and tastes really good. And the coconut oil actually adds another dimension of flavor to this already, nicely seasoned because of the marination Tofu. Yeah!