Easy Tofu Cookery

Tips For Cooking With Tofu

March 15th, 2007 Subscribe To Our Feed

Many people today are trying to take more control over their health. This usually involves more exercise, watching your weight and eating healthily. Some people make the decision that a healthy diet is one without meat at all, others don’t want to eliminate meat entirely but would like to reduce their intake. Putting this into practice, however, especially in a family, can be quite difficult and many can’t keep up their good intentions over a long period. This is where tofu comes in!
Cooking with tofu enables vegetarians to cook non-vegetarian recipes without compromising on taste, looks or nutritional content. Many of the meat and dairy ingredients can be substitited with tofu, resulting in delicious and interesting meals which all the family will enjoy.
However, there are challenges to cooking with tofu. You will be disappointed if you just substitute the meat in a recipe with the tofu. The finished dish will not have the same taste or consistency. Remember that meat gives its flavour to the dish whilst tofu absorbs the flavours from other ingredients so it is important to add other flavourings and herbs which aren’t required in the original recipe.
A good way of achieving this is by marinading the tofu for a few hours before cooking (after having removed any water in the tofu to make it more absorbent)
With practise, it is also possible to give the tofu the same texture as the meat you are trying to replace. This involves refridgerating or freezing slices of tofu before cooking. Tofu can be made to feel like beef, chicken or even fish.
One very important tip is to make the addition of tofu into your diet slowly, particularly if you have young children or elderly relatives in your family. Soybean is said to contain 16 different allergens. Tofu is made from soybeans. Soy allergies have been increasing lately due to the use of soy infant formula. Reactions can range from couging, sneezing, runny nose, hives, diarrhea to difficulty in swallowing and anaphylatic shock. Take care of the tolerance levels of the very young and the elderly.