- Hi friends.
It's Sam and today we are doing
The Ultimate Tofu Press Off.
♪So exciting. So exciting.♪
♪I'm excited to do The Ultimate Tofu Press Off.♪
I have three different tofu presses here
and I have the kind of standard
do it yourself homemade tofu press method
and we're gonna compare them
and see which one is the best,
which one we like the most,
which one is gonna get the most water
out of that tofu.
I have five blocks of tofu here
and yes when I was at the grocery store
everyone was looking at me and I was like,
"Yes, I am vegan. How did you know?"
So, why press your tofu
and what does that even mean?
When you're using extra firm tofu
it can be a really good idea to press it,
in which case you literally smoosh it
to get as much of the water
out of the tofu as possible.
Then you can marinate it
and it has a lot of room to kind of
suck up all those delicious flavors,
or when you fry it there's a lot of that
water out so it doesn't get soggy
and instead gets crispy.
This is one of the many secrets
to making tofu delicious.
I hear all the time that people don't like tofu
and I always tell them that's just because
you haven't had it prepared right.
When you press it you're gonna jump ahead in the game
and your tofu game is gonna be on point.
If you're excited to see this tofu press off
be sure to hit the like on this video
it really helps spread these delicious
vegan tidbits around the internet
and so more people see them,
and more people can be preparing tofu correctly.
These three tofu presses were sent to me
but this is not a sponsored post this is
a hundred percent honest review.
I'm gonna give you the low down
on all my thoughts on everything.
So I'd like to say a big thank you to
EZ Tofu Press, Tofuture and Raw Rutes
for sending me these tofu presses to test out
and share with you here how to press tofu properly
and make it an exciting head on head competition.
I'm excited about it.
Let the tofu press off begin.
I'm gonna start with the do it yourself at home method.
You don't need to purchase anything for this.
You can do it just at home
with the things that you have lying around.
All you're gonna need is a cutting board,
a clean dishtowel and some cans of beans
or something heavy to put on top of the cutting board.
So, I'm just gonna cut open this tofu package,
there's already a little bit of water in there
so I'm gonna pour that off,
and you're gonna do that for all the tofu presses.
There's my tofu.
Spread out your clean dish towel,
wrap up my tofu, like so.
You're gonna tuck this end under
and this end over, but you know,
do whatever you need to do for the size of your cloth.
Then it's just a matter of balancing a cutting board on top.
So I'll just balance these cans on here, like so.
To compact the tofu down.
So this is method one, the longer you press it
probably the more water will come out, but we'll see.
We'll compare it to the other tofu presses.
I'm gonna set this one aside
and move on to the next tofu press.
Spoiler alert, I've actually never used
any tofu press before, ever.
So this is not only gonna be a great experiment to see
which tofu press is the best, but to see
if getting a tofu press at all is even worth it.
This tofu press is by Tofuture
and I believe it runs for about $30 on amazon.com.
Tofuture. Tofuture.
Tofuture.
(grumbles) Woo.
This one says it needs to press for a couple hours
or overnight, whereas the other tofu presses
claim to be a little bit faster
so we're gonna get this one going.
So the way this one works is
you've got the thing to catch water,
you've got the strainer, which you set in there,
and this one is actually rubber bands.
So the extra firm tofu...
okay this is actually a little bit tight
for my rectangular block of tofu
but it does fit, so that's okay.
You put this guy on top
and you stretch these bands down.
Is anyone else secretly afraid of
rubber bands exploding in their faces?
Okay. I got it on the first notch.
I'm gonna go with that on that side.
Yes.
And then it says that you lift these handles
(snap)
and snap them inside to get
(snap)
even more pressure. Okay.
There we go. It's in there and it's nice.
Already I really love that it has
this little container to catch the water.
So this could totally just pop in my fridge
and be good for tomorrow, I wouldn't even
have to think about it.
Tofuture here we go. Off tofu-ture.
This next one weighs a thousand pounds.
Actually, I think they said it's actually
four pounds, but it feels like a thousand pounds.
This is from Raw Rutes and it's called
the Tofu Warrior.
I must say I love the packaging and design.
I used to work in design and art
so I am a sucker for that kind of stuff.
Woop. Na-naaa.
This one the pressure comes from weight.
This thing is super heavy and it is beautiful.
To me this is definitely the most beautiful one.
I could put this on my shelf and it would
suit my kitchen perfectly 'cause I do like chrome.
It looks like a very simple, lovely design, weighted.
It's got this plate in here,
so that can come out so everything can be
nicely cleaned very easily, so that's nice.
This one says it takes 15 to 30 minutes.
Now, the Tofu Warrior is the most expensive one
and I think that's because of the beautiful design and look.
This one runs at about $100 on amazon.com,
so this is definitely a pricier item.
Personally, I am big fan of high end
kitchen appliances, so if this works really well,
to me it might be worth it,
because I do eat a lot of tofu.
I am noticing that all of these presses
are rather square, and I don't know if it's just me
but the tofu I buy is normally more rectangular,
so I've had to kinda squish them all in.
They fit though.
So that this one doesn't drip everywhere
I'm gonna put it on a plate,
and then you just weight it.
Boom. Done.
So that's definitely easy, there's no struggle
with the elastic bands like the other one.
So that's pretty cool. On to the next one.
The last tofu press I'm going to be trying
today is called EZ Tofu Press.
This one, the tofu goes inside and you twist
these little things down to squish it.
This is the cheapest one, it runs at about
$20 on amazon.com, and it's also supposed to be
the fastest one, so maybe this is the most
bang for your buck. We will have to see.
So, to get this one going,
you slide the tofu in the middle.
It's got a little guide where to put it,
and then I was told that you just screw these down,
nice and tight, and evenly, I guess.
I can already see the water coming out. Okay.
This one goes on the side, like so,
and you're supposed to tighten these things
every couple of minutes, every two minutes or so
for five to 15 minutes.
I wonder how far I'm supposed to go.
We'll see. I don't know, we'll give it a try.
I don't know how far I'm supposed to go on that one or not.
Let's let these tofu's press and we'll see
which tofu press has pressed the best.
And we are back. The tofu has been pressing
and I got all the different tofu gadgets going
at all the different times, so let's compare them now.
Okay.
This has been pressing for about two hours.
I must say, normally when I press tofu using this method
I generally do it for for like 15 or 30 minutes.
I don't usually think ahead this much
but since I was pressing another tofu for two hours
I thought I might as well try this one out as well.
All right, my tofu is here, the tea towel is
quite wet and damp now.
Here is the tofu. It feels pretty dry on the outside.
Let's compare it to the other methods.
Oh that's super cute. The little Tofuture logo
has been pressed into the top of the tofu.
We can take out this guy,
you can see there's quite a bit of water
in the bottom there,
and here is the tofu.
When I compare it to the
do it yourself method, it does look
a tiny bit more pressed.
Don't worry guys, my counter's clean.
The next one is the Tofu Warrior here.
There's also quite a bit of water on the plate there
so I can see that it has pushed out a lot of water.
It's been sitting here for about half an hour.
My guess is that you can probably just let it
hang out overnight too if you wanted to.
I don't see why not.
Oh, you know what I think the Tofuture is winning.
It's a tiny little bit more dense.
It was pressing for longer though, right?
So it depends on how you wanna compare it.
And last, but not least,
we have the EZ Tofu Press.
So this has been pressing just for about 15 minutes
and every two minutes or so I kept
tightening these a little bit and you can see
it's really been squashed in here.
There is quite a bit of water left on the plate.
Watery.
Let's release this guy and see how he did.
Okay.
This guy is definitely the flattest.
The flattest in the least amount of time.
That's pretty cool.
I mean it really did smoosh it.
Okay look at this,
this is the do it yourself method
and this is the EZ Tofu Press.
So the EZ Tofu Press definitely
squashed it the most but also
it got a lot wider.
Okay, I'm just gonna break this open
and see how dry it looks.
I can see that there's lots of crack in there
so it really did squash it.
Smells like delicious tofu, I just wanna eat it.
(laughs)
The EZ Tofu Press works really well for speed
and it definitely squashed the tofu the most
and maybe this is user error, I'm not sure
but I can definitely see that a lot of cracks
formed and if you just give it a light little press
there's a ton of cracks in there,
which would be a problem
'cause if you're trying to cube it you can see
that these cubes are just cracked all over the place
and they're gonna fall right apart,
and so they're just kinda broken already.
If you're crumbling this or something
it would be great, but I think if you're
really trying to get it to hold its shape,
it might become a bit problematic.
The other tofu pressing methods
didn't have that problem,
there's no cracking in them.
I think partly that's because they are
a bit slower, a bit less intense.
I think I probably went a little crazy
and was excited to keep smooshing it down,
so maybe next time I would be
a little bit more gentle with it,
and be a lot more gradual
and not try to crank these so tight.
I do like all of the tofu presses
and I can see myself using them all
especially when I have a big tofu party.
So, for me, I think the winner is
drum roll please
(imitates drum roll)
For convenience, for price range,
and the fact that it has its own
little box just makes it really convenient.
I don't know why more of the tofu presses
didn't have a way to contain the water,
'cause as soon as you start pressing
the tofu that's of course what you need next.
Let me know if you have any other ideas
for head to head combat of things
you want me to test out and review;
of recipes you want me to demonstrate;
I'm happy to do all of it and any of it,
'cause I have a lot of fun here with you.
I hope you like watching this video.
If you do, let me know by leaving a like
and a comment and of course, don't forget to subscribe,
follow me on all the social medias
where I share lots of new things.
I plan to be posting a lot more videos
a lot more regularly, so get excited
for more delicious vegan-ness and tidbits.
See ya next time. Bon appetegan.
(chicken clucks)
Now I'm gonna have to eat a lot of tofu.
Tofu deliciousness.
Guess what I'm having for dinner?
Tofu. Gonna be eating a lot of (laughs) tofu now.
(metal clangs)
Loud.
Raw tofu.