Recipes with tofu

Tofu was not invented to replace meat. It predates that idea by a thousand years and exists in China, Japan, Korea and South-East Asia as a food in its own right, with its own textures, uses and festival dishes. The twenty recipes below never treat it as a substitute, and that is what makes them good.

Silken tofu, very high in water, is eaten with a spoon and barely handled at all: it makes Japanese yudofu, warmed through in kombu broth, miso soup, and Sichuan mapo tofu, where you push it with the back of the spatula so it does not break. Firm, pressed tofu takes frying and the wok: agedashi tofu, pad thai, Indonesian gado-gado, Filipino lumpiang gulay.

Between the two, it works as a sponge for broth: phở, ramen and Korean doenjang jjigae all rely on it.

One rule changes everything: firm tofu must be pressed under a weight for twenty minutes before it is cooked. Without that, it does not brown — it boils in its own water.