Salt and Chili Tofu

Vegetarian life is HARD

When you move to a new area as a vegetarian priority ONE is to find a chinese takeway that delivers and makes salt and chilli tofu properly.

Good salt and chilli tofu is small cubes of fluffy light tofu, dressed in a thin batter that crisps for the barest moment before delicately disappearing, releasing salt, chilli and fat flavours as it goes.

But most salt and chili tofu is rock-hard bath sponges soaked in grease.

After ten orders I have found ONE place near me that makes salt and chilli tofu right. And they put barely any salt or chilli on it, and leave it sitting in oil so that by the time it’s delivered the light crunch is gone forever. Don’t get me wrong, it tastes great. My standard order is two lots of this and I chuck all the friend onions in the bin. It costs £13.50 including delivery. I eat it in under two minutes.

I have tested every variable and now we will batter some tofu cubes PROPERLY before we all run up debts on Just Eat.

The Ingredients:

Tofu – 1 packet, squeezed and cut into 1cm cubes
Cornflour
Peanut oil for deep frying
Anything with the word ‘togarashi’ on the container (our chili powder)
Salt

The Method:

First of all let’s talk tofu. In this recipe we’re using firm regular tofu. Soft is for thickening drinks or as a substitute for something in free-from foods. I don’t know. I’ve never bought it. Silken is for whenever the shop didn’t have non-silken in stock. Buy firm tofu that’s in water in the fridge and stop fucking about.

You HAVE to squeeze water out of the tofu. If you hate cooking with tofu because it falls apart and it doesn’t taste of anything it’s because you haven’t learned to squeeze it yet. Sort yourself out. You can squeeze tofu using two plates, kitchen roll and a pile of unused cookbooks you’ve been given as presents over the years but really just buy a press. This is my favourite one.

For deep-fried tofu I’m doing a medium squeeze, for about 30 minutes. If you’re grilling tofu you can squeeze it hard all night (baby) to get something durable and solid in the mouth.

I tried three flours to coat my tofu: rice flour, cornflour and tapioca flour.

Use cornflour. The other two weren’t as good. Rice flour is too claggy and tapioca flour is bouncy rather than crispy.

Cut the squeezed tofu into 1cm cubes.

Coat the tofu by taking a big plastic box with a lid, putting cornflour in it, then adding tofu cubes and gently turning the box to coat the tofu.

Get your peanut oil (I used a wok) up to 375 degrees F (190C). Only fry a maximum of 16 cubes at once so that the oil temperature doesn’t drop much when they hit it. The oil has to be deep enough for them to swim freely.

Cook for UNDER A MINUTE.

Remove cubes (I use a steel slotted spoon) and place on kitchen roll to remove excess oil.

Repeat process for the next 16 cubes until it’s all cooked.

If you want vegetables throw some spring onions (cut into 1 inch pieces) into the hot oil and lift them straight out again.

Sprinkle the amount of salt and chili you want onto your portion.

Devour.

Give some to a friend who is gluten intolerant and they will become YOUR BEST FRIEND.

THE SECRETS

Doing anything differently than I have said above makes this dish worse:

Big bits of tofu don’t cook through fast enough, so the batter burns. Small ones make the whole process take forever.

Wet batter is too think and crunchy for the delicate tofu.

Less squishing gives you wet cubes. More gives you hard cubes.

Peanut oil is the best for deep frying because science that’s why.

Adding salt and chili to the cornflour is easy to screw up. Instead let people add it to taste at the end (add none for babies).