Rustic Zaru Tofu

Recipe

Adapted from Andrea Nguyen’s invaluable book Asian Tofu — I highly encourage grabbing a copy if you want to get better at making tofu.

Ingredients

Soymilk

Dry soybeans - 8oz /170g
Water for soaking - enough to cover soybeans generously
Water for simmering - 6 cups
Water for blending - 2 cups
Water for pressing okara - 1/2 cup

Tofu

Gypsum mixture - 1 tbsp gypsum (calcium sulphate) and 1/3 cup water - more may be needed
Lemon zest - 2 tbsp from two lemons
Light soy sauce - to taste

Zaru

A zaru is a woven bamboo strainer. I’ve loved how these looked and got one recently for washing vegetables and fruit. Tofu made with a zaru is freeform and relies on gravity to come together, instead of being pressed with a mould. Because of this, the tofu takes on the texture of the bamboo weave which I find gorgeous.

Getting better at tofu

I’ve experimented with different tofu recipes, but have been having trouble getting consistent results. To dive deeper, I looked to Andrea Nguyen’s Asian Tofu — a fantastic guidebook to a huge variety of tofu types, with detailed and considered step-by-step recipes for both making tofu from scratch and tofu dishes.

As the title suggests, the recipes cover tofu from a range of Asian food cultures, including Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese and Indian, amongst others. I’ll definitely be working through it!