Entries tagged with 'tofu'
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Vegan: Braised Eggplant with Tofu in Garlic Sauce

Woks are generally associated with super high heat, rapid cooking, and smoking hot oil, but there are other, gentler methods of cooking in one. Braising (or simmering) in a wok is about the simplest thing you can do with it. It doesn't require the crazy high heat you need for stir-frying and it doesn't require mad flipping skills. In fact, it doesn't even require a lot of time, particularly when working with a tender vegetable like eggplant.

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The Food Lab: How To Make Vegan Mayonnaise

What's stopping you from using something completely different from eggs to form the base of mayonnaise? Turns out, nothing. By removing the egg and subbing in silken tofu or even roasted eggplant, for example, you get totally vegan mayo.

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The Vegan Experience, Day 5: Say No To Faux

I can't stand faux meat. I just can't abide by the stuff. I understand the appeal, and it's precisely because veganism is a diet of moral rationale that mock meats exist. Folks don't want to eat animals because it automatically implies exploitation, yet they grew up with delicious bacon and don't want to give it up. It's a trade-off that some people are willing to make, yet deep down (or even just below the surface), I think pretty much every vegan knows that no matter how great those new soy-burger patties are, they'll never compare to the real thing in flavor. My question is, why even bother?

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Dinner Tonight: Sweet and Spicy Brussels Sprouts with Tofu and Shiitake Mushrooms

I've eaten my fair share of Brussels sprouts, but have never had them quite like this. Mixed with marinated tofu and drenched in a sweet and spicy sauce, this recipe from Plenty (one of our 10 favorite cookbooks of 2011) could have been a sticky mess. I mean, where else have you seen sweet chile sauce mixed with maple syrup? Instead, it's an addictive vegetarian meal that I can't wait to make again.

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How to Make Fresh Silken Tofu from Soy Milk

Kinugoshi, a custard-like tofu often served in the summer, can be made with no fancy equipment and three simple ingredients: water, soybeans and Epsom salt. It's easy to screw up, but with this slideshow, easy to get right on the first try. Even if you lose interest halfway through making it, you've got your own fresh soy milk.

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How The Best Mapo Dofu is Made

I'm here to set the record straight: tofu is emphatically not a meat substitute. It's an ingredient in its own right, and a delicious one at that! Indeed, in many traditional Chinese and Japanese dishes, it's prepared together with meat in a single dish. I grew up on the sweet-and-salty, heavy-on-the-beef version of Mapo Dofu that my mom used to make for us, sometimes with her own seasoning, but often just thrown together from a packet. When paired with her handmade beef dumplings, it was far and away my favorite meal.

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Seriously Asian: Creamy Tofu Dressing

The directions are simple: boil a piece of tofu, drain it, and puree it in the blender with Saikkyo miso (a particularly sweet and winey variety) with a bit of mirin (sweet sake) and salt to taste. Three ingredients in all, and either firm or soft tofu works.

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Mapo Tofu, When Low-Brow Just Hits the Spot

I'm a mapo tofu fiend. It's easily my last-meal dish, particularly when it's the real deal—packed with mouth-numbing Sichuan peppercorns brooding under a slick of red hot chili oil. But just as sometimes you're willing to give up the microbrew in exchange for an ice cold tall boy of flavorless-in-a-good-way PBR, there are times when I get a craving for heat-n-serve Japanese-style mapo tofu from a pack.

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Seriously Asian: Wheat Gluten

Like tofu, wheat gluten has been dismissed by some carnivores as a vegetarian mainstay that only health food nuts and hippies eat. Wheat gluten certainly is a healthy food, made by washing wheat flour dough with water until only the elastic mass is left. Like tofu, it's low in fat and high in protein. Yet with its delightfully chewy texture and wheaty, wholesome flavor, it's completely underappreciated.

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The Nasty Bits: Mapo Liver

What happens when I love a dish as much as I love mapo tofu? I think to myself, how can I add offal, and thereby increase my enjoyment by twofold?

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