👨🍳 How To Make Perfect Fried Tofu Every Time 🍢 & Other Things You Didn't Need To Know 🤔
Through the years several friends, customers, and even restaurant owners have asked how I make such incredible fried tofu.
It's All About Texture 🤏
In my cooking, tofu functions as a replacement for paneer in many Indian -style dishes, and for my wife's SE Asian cooking, it replaces various meat-based proteins. One thing I notice that many SE Asian restaurants back in the USA and here in Cambodia do wrong when frying tofu, is to cut it into desired shapes and fry it. When done this way the tofu ends up with a becoming a bouncing ball that's nearly impossible to bite into.
As a cook (I hate the word chef), it's all about textures, and attempts at combining crunchy and chewy usually end up as soggy if your technique is not good. I cut the tofu into long rectangular shapes and fry these tofu tubes first, low and slow with the flame to make a super crunchy exterior.
Timing Is Essential 🔪
After frying the tofu rectangles into perfect golden crispiness, I let them cool down a few minutes, but not to room temperature because the steam inside the tofu tube will eventually penetrate the crispiness and cause it to become soggy, but attempts at cutting the tofu while still hot will result in burnt fingers and more smashing than cutting.
A good serrated knife is essential to cut without smashing, all you go to do is slice into thin little pieces. I then spread the pieces out on a cutting board and let the steam evaporate to help preserves crispiness. When cut like this, there is nice crispy exterior to soak up sauces and give you a crunch, but there is also a soft center, and cut this way it doesn't fee like you are biting into a bouncing ball that will explode by shooting a hot jet of stinky tofu steam into your mouth while you're eating it.
Our Cambodian neighbors are all meat-eaters, and they recently ate a curry I made with this style of fried tofu. They remarked they don't like tofu because it stinks and the texture is weird, but the way I make it is very nice, and I take compliments from non-vegetarians with high regard.
Season Your Wok Folks 🔥
I own no aluminum or non-stick cookware, and prefer stainless steel, carbon steel, and cast iron, and I honestly think this improves the quality of all foods. It takes a little more work to care for and clean these things, but if you don't have time to season your wok every once in a while, you probably need to make some other changes in your life. Seeing the oil turn to smoke and the wok become black and slick again is super satisfying, better than any tv program.
New Kitchen Chillaxin' Area 👨🍳
The ladies return tomorrow from Siem Reap, and I hope to present them with a perfectly clean and organized house. I've even rearranged the furniture to make things more comfortable, creating a kitchen nook in the corner complete with a spectator chillaxin' zone. Usually people like to loiter near the good smells when someone's cooking, so might as well make it comfortable for them, right?
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oh very nice you cook your own food... the black pan because of fire and oil is called "gosong" in Bahasa Indonesia
"Gosong," nice that you have a simple word for it Bahasa. In Cambodia there is not an easy name for it, and different parts of the country call it different things. Translated to English, I've heard these carbon steel woks called "Chinese pan," "black pan," and "chef pan." They are hard to find here because everyone likes aluminum and non-stick cookware, but I am a old-fashioned.
This looks so good! and of course, somewhat healthy too!
I have a one liter jar that I fill with pre-sliced tofu like in this post. Whenever we make a curry, larb, fried rice, or just about anything, it's nice to just grab a fist of tofu and toss it instead of going through the process of frying a little each time we need it. Given it's not as nice as freshly fried tofu, but the convenience is worth it.
Such a nice tofu I love it
This is my favorite way to fry it, it soaks up curries and sauces very well with this method.
Tofu in Indonesia is a food that is very liked by the people of Indonesia.
Tofu is usually processed with various types of dishes which are certainly very tasty.
Here in Cambodia it's not very popular, usually only the Chinese-Khmer buy it and mix it with pork in many dishes. I don't know of any vegetarian Cambodian dishes that use tofu, but I wish there were more vegetarian choices here. Even though my wife and I are both chefs, we would love to go a nice restaurant and let someone else cook for us.
When we go to Phnom Penh we always visit an Indonesian restaurant for Cassava Leaf Curry and tempeh dishes.
You are a regular Donna Reed!
I had to google that one, a former actress turned tv chef. It seems she was on tv roughly the same time as Julia Child, wonder if she was competition 🤔?
Ha sorry!... Yeah I kinda use Donna Reed as. Go-to to refer to a "super mom" type character (she was the mom on the Donna Reed Show)...I guess I assume everyone around my age grew up watching Nick At Nite's programs from the 1960s...
Haha, learned something new. There were only two channels we could get in the countryside when I was a kid, and we were only allowed to watch tv after school for 30 minutes. I had to choose between "Saved By The Bell" and "M.A.S.H.," and believe it or not I liked the latter. I watched that show for years before I even knew anything about the Korean War 🤦♂️.
Thank you of course for sharing and of course I really like Tofu and of course at noon today because I want to see and also read your post I bought tofu to be food this afternoon which I eat with rice.
We make tofu bolado sometimes, it's very nice fried and sliced this way in balado, a nice partner for steamed rice.
Tofu balado is one of my favorite menus when my mother cooks and of course I usually ask for it if the ingredients are available even to know balado I like to add some fried small anchovies to it
My family and I love Indonesian food, urap and gado-gado are also family favorites.
Good tofu tips, thanku, but I don't think I could ever convince my husband that tofu can be yummy. Seasoning a frypan tho, that's a different story. My husband loves a fry up western breakfast any day of the week. A good pan is mist important.
I found it so bizarre at our old restaurant that none of our customers were vegans even though it was pure vegan food. I think it's because we hearty and heavy dishes with strong flavors, and that isn't what you typically find at vegan restaurants where the price is high, the portions small, and the food bland.
Our customer base was mostly muscle-bound dedicated meat-eaters, and I took that as an honor because that's a hard crowd to please. Perhaps your hubby would like it in Chinese style dishes where it's often mixed with pork 🤔?
How do you cook on your boat? I ask because I once used some alcohol-burning sailing stoves in the trailer I used to own back in the USA.
You are probably right about my husband and tofu. On the boat we use gas, so a gas BBQ in the cockpit and a 2 burner gas stove with a small oven in the galley.
You can do a lot with 2 burners and a grill, nice setup.
Thank you for the tips. I will try these out the next time I fry tahu.
👍 A nice combination of soft and crunchy with these opposing textures.
This fried tofu food is indeed the most delicious to eat.
We use it in balado quite often, do you like tofu balado?
Fantastic! I have always wanted to get an experts guidance on how to perfectly fry tofu as my few attempts have been miserable fails!
Bookmarked for later thank you so much!!!
I never thought our method was special, but every time we'd go out to eat in the capital and eat tofu dishes, we never liked the way it was fried for use in whatever dish. It's very user-friendly to have a big jar of fried tofu in the fridge, but Monkey-B can't be left alone with a jar of fried tofu because she'll pick away at it for a few hours until it's gone 😁.
🤣 Well atleast MonkeyB is snacking on something far healthier than most western kids eh..
I will definitely have a go when I get back to Melbs in a few days! and I'm looking forward to it.I hope that it's a success and not an epic fail...
Safe travels, hope this works well for you.
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Happily we are alos learning for your post How To Make Perfect Fried Tofu, ha ha ha
Because I am vegan I don't eat paneer, so when I cook south Asian foods, this fried tofu is always my paneer substitute, and coconut oil for ghee 😉.
👍👊🙏
I'm not a cook, but definitely know how to eat. During the lent season, tofu is one of the most important food since I can't have meat. The way you mentioned, is pretty darn brilliant. We have another type of stuffed tofu puff recipe, after the first fry, sliced it into half and turn it inside out, and stuff meatball(or vegan stuff) at the back of the flipped tofu 😂 found a video about it, but it's in Cantonese. May wanna use the incompetent subtitle translator from YT
Interesting, I am not familiar with this dish, but I do know the Chinese cooks like to stuff tofu. Now that Chinese food is pretty hip and trendy, we can find lots of vegan dishes when we go to the capital. In the USA I never eat Chinese food because it's made for the American taste buds, and that's everything is super sweet and nothing spicy.
No translation needed for the video, I recognize everything except one of the herbs she was using. My wife has a stuffing that would work well in a tofu puff like this. I should watch again with auto-translate, might be a lot bad-good translation for more enjoyment.
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Such a looking good this tofu and very delicious with soult.
I usually keep them in a big jar to use in recipes for another day, but when cooking I always end eating a few plain with a little salt. Sometimes I gotta snack on what I'm making 😁
Wow.. Justin.. looking at the way you cook, you have perfected the art of frying tofu.. tofu indeed is one of the toughest to fry... With that crisp skin golden brown. I can smell it from here.. 😃👍
Haha, I take a bow 🙇♂️. It was a little trial and error through the years, but this method gives some nice contrasting textures. My neighbor here in the village hated tofu, but I gave him a wax pepper curry the other day with some sliced fried tofu like this in it, and he said it was the first time he ever enjoyed eating tofu, no stink whatsoever.
In this case, I don't think it's my supreme cooking technique, but because I change the tofu water daily, something I notice even tofu vendors don't do here. If you buy tofu from a market at 3pm here, it's already hot and slimy 🤦♂️. Buy early or play at your own risk .
They don't change the tofu water? Oh no . Here it's treated like a pet.. a lot pampering. Usually if the tofu are made fresh, it's gone before the afternoon in Miri. Qhahaha.. tofu is something that is eaten almost every day here. There is one way to make a really crunchy tofu ball. Mush the whole tofu and then mix it with flour batter. Then deep fry it. It would be irresistible... 😉😉 Ahhaha
Here only ancestral Chinese-Khmer eat tofu, and almost always mix it with pork. Because they are a minority, you don't see it very often in menus or in markets. Of course the tourism industry and restaurants catering to them now commonly have tofu on the menu, but these places are often overpriced.
The way you mention frying tofu with flour, my wife does that sometimes, and I'm almost certain she got this idea from Chinese-Khmer cook. There is no Khmer word for stir-fry, instead we use a Chinese loanword here, so I think it's safe to say nobody in Cambodia was stir-frying until the Chinese came centuries ago and improved the cuisine a bit 😁.
I was just thinking how I miss the fried tofu at Chinatown. I can't make it like that and I threw my wok away. It was given to me and it was always getting rusty. I have to get another now to watch the wok t.v. show.
Very relaxing looking kitchen chillin' area.
A good carbon steel wok is easy to take care of if you use it daily. You can oil them for longer term storage, but they are magnets for hair, dust, and dirt flying around the house. We use our wok almost daily, but I still have to season it once a week or so.
The kids like the new spectator area for cooking, but they still aren't learning recipes yet. I should teach Srey-Yuu how to make roti dough and roll one out.