This Technique Will Change the Way You Eat Tofu.

Hey everyone, welcome back to my kitchen. Today I'm going to be sharing one of my favorite techniques to transform the texture of tofu when I'm wanting it to be a little bit more meaty and substantial and then we are going to build upon that base technique to make three tofu dishes that I think you guys are really going to love. We'll be making a saucy barbecue tofu sandwich, a super savory bulgogi style tofu rice bowl, and a plant-based take on a classic chicken salad sandwich. So let's go ahead and dive into the base technique which is very simple. So step one, we are going to take a block of tofu, pat it dry, and I'm just going to grate it on a regular box grater. Use the coarse side. My preferred tofu for this is the super firm high-protein tofu just because there's less moisture in it which makes it easier to brown and it also makes it easier to grate. If you can't find high-protein tofu you can absolutely use just regular extra firm. I would just recommend that you give it a really good press preferably with something really heavy to kind of condense the texture and to press out a lot of the extra moisture and you're also probably going to want to use one and a half blocks of extra firm just because it shrinks much more than the super firm once you've pressed it and cooked it. Now that we have our tofu all shredded you're going to want to grab a nice heavy skillet. The bigger the better in this case because if your pan is too crowded you're just going to get a lot of steam instead of the browning that we're looking for. So we're going to go ahead and heat this over medium, medium-high. Make sure it's really nice and preheated and I'm going to add in one to two tablespoons of a nice neutral vegetable oil something with a high smoke point. I like using algae oil. I always order it from Thrive Market but peanut oil works too. You can do this without oil. You can dry fry it but make sure that your pan is non-stick in that case, okay? I'm also going to add in some salt right into the oil and when the oil shimmers we are going to add in our tofu. Just going to make sure the entire bottom of the pan is coated. Add this in and we're going to make a nice even layer. Now you really want to resist the urge to be messing with this too much. It needs at least a few minutes undisturbed in contact with that hot pan to form that kind of golden crust that's going to give it that meaty chewy texture that helps it hold up so nicely in sauces. A few minutes have passed, maybe like five minutes and I'm going to take a little peek under here. It's golden brown and I'm going to give it a flip just working a little at a time. Spread it back out into one layer and we are going to repeat this process again. A couple more minutes undisturbed. Now I like to reduce the heat just a little bit and from here on out we're going to be stirring it a little more frequently maybe every one to two minutes just until the tofu is evenly golden brown sort of starting to get nice and crispy around the edges and you can kind of take this as far as you like. I actually like to cook it till it seems like a little overly dried because once you add in a nice sauce or mayo it really soaks it all up and it gives it like the perfect texture. Now if you want to make like a double batch of this or you just don't feel like babysitting a pan for this long you can make this in the oven on a big sheet tray. You can even make it in the air fryer. You just want to go ahead and line the basket with some parchment paper and make sure you shake it very often. This is looking good to me and that's really it. This is the core technique that we're going to be building off of today. It's really the same exact principle we're using anytime we're pan frying tofu cubes or steaks but because the tofu was shredded into these long flat pieces we are maximizing the surface area which is just creating more real estate for the maillard reaction which is not only going to transform the texture but also pull out those really nice caramelized umami complex flavors. I do just have to say this on its own is quite addictive like these little crispy pieces. I could just snack on this straight out of the pan with a little salt. I have done it many times. Also tangentially if you guys are familiar with Caitlyn Shoemaker from my bowl that food blog she did a challenge where she timed herself eating a block of tofu like straight out of the package no pressing, no salt, no nothing and she challenged Eric and me to do it so you know let me know if you want to see that because I know Eric wants to do it so I'm just I'll just be along for the ride. She did it in four and a half minutes and I know for sure I can have that. I can't. I don't even know if I'll finish it but anyway. Okay surprise guys we are in a new kitchen. Welcome to Sarah's Vegan Kitchen version eight or nine. The move just got too hectic so I paused filming this video and we are resuming here. Now as you may know being in this limbo state during the middle of a move can make it very difficult to cook like you normally do and this usually means eating a lot of pre-made food usually a lot of takeout and fast food which not only is expensive but can also make you not feel the best and this is yet another reason why we love Thrive Market who is sponsoring today's video. If you've been watching my videos for a while you'll know how much we love Thrive Market. They are an online membership-based grocery store that specializes in products made with clean ingredients. We are constantly buying pantry staples, snacks and other ingredients from them which is a lifesaver for someone who cooks as much as I do. So when we ordered our latest box from them we had it delivered straight here and we filled it with all sorts of things to power us through this move while energizing us and saving us a lot of time. So we got things like canned soups, seasoned beans, our favorite Rao's pasta sauce, protein pasta, got some protein shakes, protein bars, and some snacks for both ourselves and Leela. Thrive Market is just overall great for convenience even in everyday life. They have a massive catalog of products that is curated to restrict over a thousand ingredients and you can sort the entire thing based on your lifestyle and preferences. You can search for vegan or organic for example. A Thrive Market membership is just $5 a month and orders over $49 ship for free and for every membership purchased Thrive Market gifts one to a family in need which I think is amazing. So if you want to try out Thrive Market for yourself and stock up your kitchen for the end of summer head to thrivemarket.com slash Sarah's Vegan Kitchen. You'll get $20 off your first three orders plus a free gift. And now let's get back to our recipes. Let's move on to the first recipe utilizing this shredded crispy tofu. We're going to be making a delicious saucy barbecue sandwich. I went ahead and did some prep work ahead of time. I made this delicious sauce. This is a combination of some hot water that I used to dissolve a teaspoon of beef style vegan bouillon paste, some soy sauce, some apple cider vinegar, garlic and onion powder, some nutritional yeast that I got from Thrive Market, and some smoked paprika. And I just mix that all together and we are going to bring our tofu back up to a nice little sizzle. Add this on and we're going to let it coat the tofu and reduce and just give it that umami base. That took maybe like one minute. The sauce has reduced. No loose liquid in the pan. And I'm going to reduce the heat to low and stir in a store-bought barbecue sauce. You can add more or less barbecue sauce just depending on how saucy you want your sandwich to be. This looks good to me. Oh my god, it smells incredible. I'm going to cover this just to keep it warm and saucy while I talk to you about this coleslaw that I made earlier. This is a combination of vegan mayo, unsweetened non-dairy yogurt. I used a Greek style coconut yogurt, some apple cider vinegar, some white miso paste from Thrive Market, a couple teaspoons of Dijon mustard. I like a sweet coleslaw, kind of up to you, so I put in a little splash of maple syrup. Fun fact, I lived most of my life thinking that the seeds in coleslaw were poppy seeds. Found out recently they're celery seeds, so you can use like a quarter teaspoon of those. They're actually quite bitter, very potent, so use a light hand with them. If you don't have them, you could use celery salt in place of regular kosher salt or just skip them altogether. This, really delicious. Okay, a toasted bun is an absolute must for me. Toast it with a little bit of butter or vegan mayo in there. And what else? Pickles. You put anything else on a barbecue sandwich? Also, I'm wearing pajama bottoms and Crocs. Kitchen Crocs. Work from home life. Yeah. We work from home. I'm gonna plate this up and I just gotta say, oh, look how beautiful that is. I don't want none unless you got toasted buns, hun. Some of our saucy tofu. Pile that on there. Some of our beautiful rainbow slaw. I got these fancy pickles. Okay, now just look at that. There's really gonna be no graceful way to eat this. I always have to press my sandwiches. You have to give it CPR first. At first I was afraid. I was petrified. Okay, okay, let's do this. Babe, that is so good. Do I have to try it even though I don't really want to be on camera? You can try it off camera. No, I'll cut it. This kitchen's too small. We should move. This is the last video we're filming in this kitchen, you guys. That was the bite of a champion. Oh my god. Incredible. Make it. Let me just say that coleslaw tastes like it came from a Long Island deli. That tastes like coleslaw from my childhood. Good job, honey. Thank you. Good lord, it's good. All right, let's continue with our second recipe. Tonight we're gonna be making bulgogi-style tofu rice bowls, and this is also gonna be the first recipe that we're filming in this new place. And quick side note, because I know people are gonna ask, we did not buy this place. We are still renting. Hopefully stay here a couple years, and the next place that we move into hopefully will be a house that we purchase. It will be, I can tell you that. Eric promises, so it's gonna happen. Anyway, we are making bulgogi-style tofu rice bowls, and we're gonna start by repeating that core technique that I explained earlier. Preheating this pan here. And then we're gonna make a quick sauce, glaze the tofu, serve it with some rice, some veggies. It's gonna be delicious. So we've heated up some oil in our pan. Spreading out our tofu. After a few minutes, peek under, and when it's golden brown, give it a flip. So I have my tofu cooking back there. I've reduced the heat a little bit, and we are gonna take a moment to make a really quick sauce that is based on bulgogi marinade. So we have some apple. This is a Fuji apple. Traditionally, you would use some Asian pear, but Fuji apple works as well. And some onion, and you can hand grate these, but since I know if I hand grate this, it's gonna make my eyes turn bright red. I'm just gonna throw everything into a blender and blend it up. I'm gonna chop up about a quarter of this apple. You can leave the peel on in everything. And I'm also gonna do a quarter of this small onion. Then as far as garlic, I always say measure it with your heart. Let's go with four cloves or five. So those are going in, and then we're gonna measure out three tablespoons of soy sauce. Use a tablespoon of toasted sesame oil. A tablespoon of mirin. This is a cooking wine. If you don't have any mirin, you can substitute some rice vinegar and a little extra sugar. Optional, if you wanna make it spicy, let's do a little gochugaru. And if you don't have these, you can use regular red pepper flakes. Tablespoon of brown sugar. I don't always add ginger, but this time I'm gonna add about a one inch piece. And then some black pepper. Okay, and then we're just gonna give this a quick blend. All right, easy as that. And we're gonna go back to our tofu and add this on. So our tofu is looking nice and golden brown now. We're going to add in some scallions. These are just the white bottoms. Give that a quick stir. Maybe just 30 seconds here. We're gonna add in our sauce. It's gonna start bubbling right away, and we're just gonna keep stirring until it kind of reduces into a nice glaze. So the sauce has reduced. You can see there's no extra liquid in the pan, but we're gonna let it keep cooking so the sugars in the soy sauce and the brown sugar and the apple can caramelize and darken a little bit. Now we're just gonna finish with some fresh scallions and some toasted sesame seeds. Can you tell the people what Lila's doing in the background? She is playing with her stuffed pickle. She is obsessed with it. Beautiful. We have our bulgogi style tofu rice bowls. You can serve it with any of your favorite vegetables. It's very hot out, so I decided to keep it really nice and fresh with some cucumbers, some radishes, some fresh julienned carrots, and some edamame, extra protein. So this is almost kind of like a sushi bowl alternative for us. Let's give it a quick taste. That is just so good. It came together very quickly. So much flavor from the fresh aromatics. A little bit sweet, a little bit savory, a little bit of heat. I actually think that this time I will add some sriracha because it could use it, but it would also make an amazing filling for lettuce wraps if you want something very fresh. But this is just delicious. I think I'm gonna start meal prepping this. Okay, I want to share one more of my favorite ways to use crispy shredded tofu, and it's to use it as the base of a salad, like a chicken salad, and to add it to wraps and sandwiches, things like that. Because I love a classic chickpea salad, but sometimes you just want something a little bit more hearty and higher in protein. So this really fits the bill there. So let me explain to you how I make this. I'm gonna overlay some footage from the last house, but this batch here Eric made freshly today, and it's really delicious. Once you have your tofu nice and crisped up, you're gonna set it aside, let it cool, and in a big mixing bowl, you're gonna mix together a classic chicken salad style dressing. I like to use a combination of vegan mayo and yogurt. I use like a Greek style coconut yogurt. It just lightens up a little bit, but you can use all mayo. You're gonna add some lemon juice, some Dijon mustard. I like a lot of tang in my salads. Optional, but highly recommended, a little bit of white miso paste, or if you have some sort of chicken style veggie bouillon paste, like better than bouillon, a teaspoon or two of that just boosts the umami factor. Some onion powder and garlic powder. And then again, optionally, I like to add in some nutritional yeast. So you mix the dressing all up, and then you add in your tofu, along with some finely diced celery for crunch, some scallions or red onions. I personally like to add a lot of fresh dill to mine. You can add parsley or dry herbs instead. And then I also like to add a little bit of apple into my chicken salad. I know not everyone is down with the like sweet savory combination. Let me know what you think about fruit in your chicken salad. But personally, I really like it. That or some grapes. And that's pretty much it. It is really delicious. I honestly will just eat it straight out of the bowl once we've made it. And I've been making a lot of different variations on this. Eric's favorite is our buffalo ranch one. Kind of the same idea, but the dressing has ranch seasoning and buffalo sauce. So it's a little bit spicy. We also add some shredded carrot to that. But the customizations you can make to this are endless. You can add curry, some raisins, anything you would add to your regular chicken salad. Let's make a sandwich out of this. We got the chef himself here. It's your recipe. Every time I develop a recipe and then Eric makes my recipe, I somehow like his version of it better. And I think it's because she didn't have to put the labor into making it. So like it tastes better when it's just given to you. And I think it's actually better. And then she's like, you did such a good job. And I'm like, I just followed your recipe. Okay, ready? Yes, I'll eat around this horrifyingly moist tomato. Oh no, he hates tomatoes. No, it's fine. I'll eat around it. I don't want to compromise your experience. Oh my god, that's really nice. Thank you. Just who likes tomato on a sandwich? A lot of people. I know most people probably. So good. Very savory. That's really good. I too love a chickpea salad. But sometimes you want a vegan alternative that's not beans. Like I like the meatiness of the tofu. Chickpeas don't really hit the same way. It doesn't feel like chicken salad in the way that this does. So it's really nice. Oh, here she comes. Oh yes. You guys, this tofu chicken salad is absolutely delicious. Okay, two paws way, way up. That wraps up this video, you guys. Thank you so much for watching. Hopefully this inspires you. If you try out one of these recipes, leave a comment. Let me know what you thought. Or upload a photo to Instagram, tag us. We love to see you guys making our recipes. All right, I'll see you next time. Bye.