Single Guy’s Kitchen

Tofu is a staple in most vegetarian or vegan diets. It is relatively inexpensive and is a good source of protein. It is also relatively tasteles. While that might not sound great on the surface and it certainly isn’t if you eat tofu by itself, but it means when mixed with other flavorful foods tofu simple takes on the flavor of what it’s cooked with it. This means you can add a good source of protein to a vegetarian meal without affecting the flavor. So how about adding tofu to the standard black beans and rice type recipe featured on here previously?

The plan was to stir fry the tofu so it was important to buy the extra firm tofu. It will usually say something on the package like “good for frying, etc”. Other softer varieties can be used for other things such as smoothies.

Tofu is packed in water so you’ll need to drain it out. I recommend opening a small corner and letting it all drain out. Tofu is packaged as just one large block. It is typically served cubed and that’s easy enough to do.

Tofu doesn’t take long to cook and but you’ll want to give it enough time to absorb the flavor of the dish it is being served in. In this case, the vegetables were lightly cooked in oil and then the tofu was added.

The flavor wasn’t that satisfying at this point so rather than mix the black beans in just before serving, we decided to let them cook with the tofu and vegetables. This gave the tofu more flavor and a nice color. Alternatively marinading the tofu would be a good option. Due to the recent move though the kitchen is limited and we didn’t have any soy sauce.

So how did it taste? It tasted like black beans and rice normally tastes. Like I said before, the tofu does not add flavor. It does have an interesting texture though, almost sponge like. Texture can be a big barrier for some people but I think in this case it worked out very well. This dish already had a large variety of textures with the rice, beans, and different vegetables so the tofu fit right in. It did make the dish more filling and added a lot of protein.

Will there be more tofu cooking on Single Guy’s Kitchen? Given Sandy’s status as a vegetarian, I’d say definitely so. Tofu is also fairly cheap. Our package was $2.50 and will probably stretch to at least three different meals between left overs from this dish and whatever else we use the tofu for. I hate to say it but that’s a much better deal than most meats.

Cooking with tofu might sound intimidating but it is actually rather simple.  It is cheap too so it’s a good thing to experiment with.  It can be adapted to almost any meal and take on any flavor.  It is commonly used a meat substitute or as the “fake” meats you see in the grocery store.  Don’t worry, there’s nothing to fear when it comes to cooking with tofu.