/ck/ - Food & Cooking

> be human over the age of 15
> never tried one of the most basic foods

i think you’re a faggot

>>20406928
it just always looked unappealing to me.

Pretty meh. It's best fried crispy, or maybe the siky stuff used as a thickener of sorts. But in response to everyone saying it's a vehicle for other flavours, it doesn't absorb it well like starches do, just gets coated without soaking. And it doesn't have any noticeable complementary flavour like mild animal protiens. Other beans have nicer flavour but none of them have a similar amount of protein.

>>20406928
>one of the most basic foods
Im not asian though

>>20406920
It has no taste even when fried or marinated.

>>20406920
It doesn't really taste of anything and it's texture is radically different depending on how it is prepared. So it's practically impossible to have any strong opinion on tofu unless you have some sort of soy allergy.

I'm not vegetarian either but I really love tofu.
>>20406944
>It's best fried crispy
I really like it braised but if it's gonna be crispy, my mum used to make fried stuffed tofu. You get a block of super firm, pressed, dried tofu, cut it into halves or quarters diagonally then slice a pocket into each piece which you stuff with bean threads and sauteed vegetables and/or meat. Wet it, dredge in seasoned cornflour/cornstarch, let it hydrate and dredge again then into hot oil it goes.
>doesn't absorb flavour, just gets coated without soaking
lolwut
When properly braised, tofu swells in size and takes on it's braising liquid's hue throughout. Have you never braised tofu correctly?
>it doesn't have any noticeable complementary flavour
I'm starting to think you had tofu once and never again. Having grown up with it, I generally despise Japanese food as bland and disinteresting but they really know their way around tofu. The toppings on hiyayakko simply don't work as well with any other protein, even other styles of tofu besides Japanese.
>Other beans have nicer flavour
Different flavour, not necessarily nicer.

>>20406981
I strongly enjoy how much it can vary. I do not, however, like tempeh. Tempeh can go suck a shit

I tried mapo tofu once in my life because it sounds delicious and everyone raves about it, but it tasted like pretty much nothing to me. Despite being covered in a bunch of delicious looking chili sauce, it didn't seem to absorb any of the flavor at all. Not sure if this is just because it wasn't cooked properly and I need to try it again from somewhere else or what.

>>20407059
Chinese take away never seem to cook it properly. Too many ingredients, I think.
Example: I was with some friends while wandering about downtown some city when we passed a Chinese takeaway spot that had a table by the window, perfect for people watching. We went in and while I don't remember what I got, they ordered their maps tofu and were disappointed that, according to them, it tasted like Pizza Hut sausage and little else. Some months later, I took them to a proper place and they disliked the mapo tofu at first because of how strongly flavoured it was, which they weren't expecting, but grew to enjoy it as the meal progressed. They also enjoyed gong bao frog, the dish kung pao chicken is based on.

It provides a fun texture. You can make the flavor more mild or more intense depending on what sauce you smother it with. Personally I love tofu but it doesn't fit my macros so I almost never eat it.

>>20407059
You need to take smaller bites; but yeah, tofu isn't like a sponge even though everyone says it has to be soaked in something.

>>20406920
Just a poverty food

>>20406920
It's really fucking bland unless you soak it ahead of time in some kind of sauce.

>>20407059
The best part of mapo tofu isn't even the tofu, it's the pork and chili sauce. No fast food place will ever have an authentic version because it's always a "vegetarian" dish with no pork. Look up a recipe and make it yourself if you want the real thing

>>20407632
Tofu is mostly eaten by non-vegetarians. It's just an ordinary ingredient in most homes in Asia. Tempeh is the best form of tofu I reckon.
Picrel sambal tempeh goreng, tastes very meaty because it's cooked with shrimp paste, fish sauce and anchovies. Mmmm. Sedap!

>>20406920
>think about tofu
its good, youve probably eaten it in Chinese food and never noticed it

for good dishes make Mapo Tofu with ground beef/pork or do a stir fry with it or do a light flour dressing on the tofu cubes and quick fry them and dip in sauce

>>20407632
I've never seen a vegetarian mapo tofu on any menu

>>20407839
Sometimes they call it buddha tofu, but make mapo without the pork that some fat Americans get

>>20406920
I've never eaten tofu and never will because I'm not an asian woman nor do I want to become one.

>>20406920
I think its curdled soy milk, so its probably only good as animal feed. Doesn't sound appealing to me at all.

>>20407931
It's a bean pressed into a brick you fucking retard.

>>20407935
OK, so legumes contain a chemical called "phytoestrogens" so actually it's not good to concentrate them in such a manner. Its unhealthy for your hormones. Do you like cheese?

>>20406920
weeb shit

>>20407752
>grew up in bahasaland
>get blackmerican gf while at school
>introduce her to tempe, saying "I hate this shit, it's gross, but I forgot to get this dish without it, oops"
>she likes it
>I still really, really don't
I bought some a few weeks ago just to see if I'm still not a fan and... Yeah. Still not. Used it to make nasi pecel tempe goreng. Couldn't eat it otherwise without a bucketful of pecel

>>20408019
i should try malay food some time if the sauce is that good

>>20408029
Pecel is Indonesian, tho. Javanese, specifically. I should call it pecal, which is Melayu for the same dish, but it's not native to Malaysia/Singapore.
idgaf since it's good either way
>tfw someone knows you lived in the straits despite using the indonesian word

>>20407059
agreed with the other anons that takeout places seem to fuck it up. it's really easy to make at home if you have access to a chinese market. hardest to find items are salted black beans (douchi) and doubanjiang but those are pretty basic. I recommend the souped up recipes recipe to start.

>>20407839
You've never looked at any chinese menus then

>>20406920
i don't hate it, but it's pretty boring. i'd rather eat other things.

>>20406920
More than any other protein I know of, tofu is as good or as bad as the cook who prepared it makes it. It's really easy to make shitty bland tofu, in which case you have a boring spongy substance that either tastes of nothing or of freshly cut grass. But good tofu can be amazing, provided it's made well and for a dish that is balanced around it. Great tofu rivals great meat in my opinion, but on the lower end badly cooked meat is miles ahead of bad tofu.

>>20406920
Tofu is really going to depend on a few factors. First off, when you buy it at the store, you'll generally see that you have various choices from "extra soft" to "extra firm". The soft, to me, has an almost jello-like consistency and I always go for firmer tofu. Also, it can be eaten as-is or can be fried or prepared in any number of ways. If I'm making tofu, I'll usually either stir-fry strips or pan-fry a slice. My ex's brothers liked to eat it uncooked with maple syrup (Filipinos). It's pretty inoffensive, taste wise, but texture, I think, puts a lot of folks off, so you'll need to play around with it to see how you most prefer it.

>>20408069
lol dont worry, I took a wild guess. that "someone" is just google search telling me what Pecel is to the best of its ability

>>20408182
You also need to make sure you press the firm tofu to get the water out. Some of the extra soft tofu is already flavored so you just eat it like flan.

i like it in miso soup

>>20406920
It's pretty meh. Also, for all the "but it's muh proteen!" veganfags, tofu is mostly water. 125g of tofu has 10g of protein; since you need about 100g of protein per day (median), you'd need to eat about three pounds of tofu in order to meet your protein needs.

>>20408256
>100g
i know you want to believe this to justify your gut busting diet, amerifat, but the vast majority of the world does not eat anything close to that and they are doing fine while american 20 yr olds see skyrocketing rates of colon cancer

unless youre a retarded bodybuilding faggot you only need a bit of meat for heme iron and other than that you do not need to fucking "get protein," it is literally just a faggot excuse to eat six chicken breasts a day because you dont have anything better to do with your life

if you love meat just say it. muh "100g." heres a tip pal, you already know someones fucking bullshitting you when they hand out such round numbers.

>>20406920
I'm a carnivorous savage and even I think it's great. I accidentally ordered a vegetarian BLT once and they blistered a strip of tofu and put salt and liquid smoke on it. It was not a convincing bacon substitute but it still tasted quite nice.

>>20408256
>implying people eat only one food daily
lmao
Using your same argument, you'd have to eat 50 McNuggets, weighing about 2lbs, to get the right amount of protein.

>>20408291
That's based
I eat meat every day but that doesn't mean other things can't taste good
Eat food that tastes good
One of my favorite salads is picrel
Goes great with bulgogi

>>20408306
>>20408256
I'd rather have 15 White Castles.

>>20408318
>>20408306
>>20408256
Fuck that. 10lbs of Checkers fries have the perfect amount of protein for a growing boy like me!

>>20408317
Looks good but that's a salad?

I grew up eating it in a lot of different Asian dishes. It's like any other ingredient or protein source in that it can vary wildly by how it's prepared.
There's also like half a dozen different types of tofu which you would use for different purposes.
It can vary from being delicious and the best part of a dish to being completely unnoticeable and blended in to being bland and boring.

>>20408351
It was just the first pic I found, I didn't notice it wasn't sliced
You're supposed to slice it in half lengthwise then across it every 5/8ths of an inch or so
It's silken tofu, the dressing is soy sauce, sugar, water, neutral oil, sesame oil, fresh garlic and ginger juice, and the tofu is topped with gochugaru, minced fresh chilis, sliced green onion, and sesame seeds
But you can tweak it how you like, naturally, I usually don't bother juicing the garlic and ginger

>>20408370
based actual Asian poster

>>20407059
every takeout place americanizes the shit out of it since they think no one can handle sichuan pepper
worse yet, more american places stick a bunch of fucking vegetables in it and have almost no sauce
make it yourself with soft or silken tofu in relatively small pieces, the tofu doesnt add to the flavour, its more like it spreads out the extreme flavour of the other components, and adds an interesting texture

>>20408379
>stick a bunch of fucking vegetables in it
I love vegetables but I always found this extremely weird of American-style Chinese. You get chao ho fun in HK and it's just beef, noodles and sauce with the odd bit of onion or leaf broccoli thrown in. You get CHF in America and it's got carrots and onion and celery and water chestnuts and broccoli and baby corn and snowpeas and beansprouts and hepatitis.

>>20408376
Oh and a splash of white vinegar or rice wine vinegar in the dressing
I like white vinegar better because it's sharper, you don't need a lot just enough for a twang
Sometimes instead of sugar I'll use yuzu

>>20408431
>>20408370
>>20408317
It's just golian olijinar donut steel version of hiyayakko lmao
Do Koreans even have anything original?

>>20408447
The Romans were eating hamburgers when they went marching into Gaul
Everything is a remix

>>20408094
>any
wtf are you saying anon?

>>20408451
Nigga, 1800 years difference between what Romans were eating and some dude in Hartford slapping beef between two slices of bread is forgiveable. Koreans claiming shit from Japan and China as Hanguk OC is not.

>>20408447
>>20408454
no bully based informative Asian poster
I'm going to investigate that tofu dish and bulgogi on youtube now

>>20408454
Korea's been conquered by both China and Japan, they're gonna share some recipes
The US is probably the biggest influence on Korean food today, it's been hugely americanized
>>20408467
Try bulgogi dogs
>>20408443

>>20408471
>Try bulgogi dogs
A Vietnamese woman made me a fake dog recipe with a pig leg and some herbs. If dogs actually taste anything like that then I can solve the stray dog problem.

>>20408471
>China
Mongols. The Mongols controlled China at the time and made Goryeo a vassal state.

>>20408568
I always thought it was funny that the Mongols were fighting samurai and knights on horseback at the same time when the other two didn't even know each other existed

>>20408599
>black plague occurs
>Mongols intentionally catapult infected corpses as a bio-weapon
those guys don't fuck around

>>20408599
Heh. Never considered that.

>>20406920
It takes forever to get crispy and doesn't do anything an egg couldn't do.

>>20408807
>doesn't do anything an egg couldn't do.
You've never had tofu, have you?

Why is it so expensive? I like it but I cant justify it when there is cheaper protein

>>20409079
>Why is it so expensive?
$1.50/lb is expensive (and that's for the organic shit)? I buy dried, extra firm, organic tofu for $2.50/lb.

>>20409096
I dont see it for less than $8 in my store

>>20409100
what the fuck store are you going to lmao

>>20409124
yeah blame the victim dickhead

>>20406920
i went through a vegan phase and never really enjoyed tofu - to use it properly you need to squeeze/drain it and marinade it, and it still isn't great. tempeh is a lot better imo

>>20407839

thats strange. most places make it without meat here in PHX. I use pork shoulder when i cook it though. my 2 favorite chinese places both put pork in theirs too.

>>20409702
Most takeaway spots make it vegetarian but it authentically is not.
>>20409146
It's not victim blaming, it's asking for clarification. I would also like to know what in the motherfuck store she's seeing tofu for $8/lb. Not even Wholly Overpriced Foods sells tofu for that much. And they sell asparagus water. On its face, the idea of paying for water you've boiled asparagus in at any price is ridiculous to begin with but I think they were selling that shit for $10/quart or some nonsense.
And they still didn't sell tofu for $8/lb.

>>20406938
turn it into a dragon

>>20410061
Nigga, that's an eagle.

>>20409913
Look, I've lived in a number of Western states and I've never heard of, seen, or eaten vegetarian mapo tofu, including at Japanese restaurants, when they serve mabodofu
I'm thinking a bunch of butthurt vegetarians just realized they've been eating pork and want me to be wrong

>>20406920
I'd eat it more often if meat didn't exist.

>>20410801
How many menus should I post to show you how retarded you are?

>>20410478
Eagle deez nuts.

>>20411350
Present them.

Uncooked by itself it sucks ass, is bland bordering on flavourless and an unappealing texture.
When cooked and spiced, at absolute best it is just okay. I like it dipped in spiced tahini, baking them, and adding them so a stir fry, but honestly, I would prefer almost any other form of protein/meat.

i'd eat more of it, if i were a woman...

>>20411356
Damn, that episode was nearly a quarter century ago now.

I like it though I eat it maybe a handful of times per year at most. It has an interesting culinary position, not like meat really at all but more complex/sating than other legumes could ever be.

>>20406920
I crave it sometimes like I crave popcorn. sort of a junkfood protein.