/ck/ - Food & Cooking

the right way to buy tofu is pre-fried. It's nice and aerated.
You can just slice it and toss it in noodle or rice dishes or curries or soups and it's delicious. Or even just snack on it raw with hoisin sauce.

Otherwise tofu is gross/boring and a waste of time. Asian people just like wierd textures.

If you live in a big city chances are there's a shop with chinese people frying tofu fresh each day and selling it very cheaply, you just have to find that shop, it probably won't be advertised in english. Asian grocery stores sell it packages but it's less fresh and more expensive.

Also realise tofu isn't a meat substitute. Most famous tofu dishes have meat in them. Nor is it a 'health food'

>>12205981
you're not buying it right
i don't like most tofu much either
i buy this stuff fried fresh daily, very cheaply
not mass produced
look at it, light, aerated

good just sliced in stir-fries

try to find a shop which makes it daily
try to find a shop which fries it daily

this is how i buy it, from a little dude who doesn't speak english
It's MUCH better than packaged stuff, and cheaper.
I think he mostly supplies to restaurants.
If you live in a city with a big chinese diaspora, you're gonna have one of these little dudes hiding somewhere. You just have to find him. Mine didn't have a website or anything.

With it like this, I just add cubes to curries or soups or slice it and add it to stirfries, fried noodle dishes like pad thai, fried rice, anything.

Just don't make the mistake of thinking you should never eat it with meat or that it has to be healthy, chinese people don't consider tofu that way.

basically you eat out of a little bowl like this on a small plate
and you start with it filled with broth, drink the broth like it's a cup, then fill it with rice, and pick at shared dishes on the table, generally taking a couple pieces and putting it on your rice then eating out of the bowl, or just eating straight from the shared plates and use your small plate to put bones on and rest your bowl on.
They also did a lot of like putting tasty morsels on each others plates especially when out eating.

ignore the tofu although also try find a place locally that fries it if you can because its the good stuff

buy it fried
it's not as crispy, but it's aerated, and delicious just as a snack with hoisin sauce, or you can just put cubes in stews/ curries or cut it up and just put it in any stir fry, fried noodles, fried rice, etc.
You don't have to fuck around drying it and shit.

this little place near me fries it fresh daily with their own tofu they make
I guarantee you have a shop like that if you live in a city with chinese people, you just have to find it.
Or you can probably buy packaged fried stuff, which is good, but not as fresh.
It's very cheap either way.

Fuck regular plain raw tofu.