Do you want to learn how to make tofu in under three minutes?
Well, today on WTF, I'm going to use glucono delta-lactone
to make tofu live on the show.
Hello, and welcome to WTF, where we transform food here in the
Modernist Pantry test kitchen.
I'm chef Scott Guerin.
And I'm Janie Wang, the owner of Modernist Pantry.
Today, Scott and I are really happy to be talking about, you know, one
of our favorite foods, which is tofu.
And I've certainly eaten tons and tons of tofu in my lifetime, but
certainly have never also made it.
But today we're going to go through exactly how to do that.
So Scott, what ingredient do we use?
And let's get started with the process.
So we really need to get the process going because we're gonna actually make
tofu from the heating process to the serving process here on the show today.
We're going to be using an ingredient called GDL, which
is glucono delta-lactone.
And it's an acidifier that's actually one-third the acidity,
or sourness, of citric acid.
So it's used just to coagulate the soy milk and make the tofu.
So really quick, I took some soybeans, you can see here, and I
just reconstitute them in some water.
Soak them in some water.
Then, I take that and I blend it.
I strain that out with a Superbag, which you could find an episode
online for our Superbags on WTF.
Yeah.
And then I heat the milk.
So all this is right here is just soybeans, water that have been heated.
Okay.
I'm going to pour this into this container.
And in here I have one gram of GDL, one gram of cornstarch, and all that
does is allows the GDL to, you know, disperse properly, and 10 grams of water.
And this is a half batch than the recipe that you'll find online.
I just want to be able to show you can fill up one of our containers here.
So, I'm going to take this.
And one thing you want to do is you need to pour this in quickly
because if you don't, it'll start to set immediately in here.
And then when you go to pour it then into your mold, it'll just break apart.
So I'm going to pour it in very quickly.
And then from there, I'm going to pour it into my mold.
And the reason why I do that two-step pouring is that it gives it a little
bit more time to mix together.
So when it goes in and starts to mix, and then I pour it into
my bowl, that'll mix even more.
Now we don't touch it, but in a few moments, this will
then be tofu that I can serve.
And this is a very soft type of tofu.
So this is known as tofu fa.
People may not like it, 'cause it's just so soft.
I love it.
I think it's an amazing type of tofu, but a lot of people will
go for like extra firm tofu when they go to the grocery store.
And that's what turns people off to tofu.
Right?
Yeah.
So if you haven't tried silken tofu, which is what the softest varieties often refer
to, you know, definitely give it a shot.
It's delicious.
And but like, just so you guys, we kind of had to walk through
this process fairly quickly.
So a couple of things, you know, I think one thing people are like, if I don't
want to do my own soy milk, can you use a commercially store-bought soy milk?
Good.
That's a very good question.
You can.
The one thing you need to look out for are emulsifiers that are
inside the soy milk themselves.
Also flavorings.
There's sometimes a lot of sugar in these soy milks.
A lot of vanilla, you know, to kind of hide that soy flavor.
So if you're going to get a very bland, very natural soy
product, that's totally fine.
But if you're going to just go, oh, I'm going to grab this sweetened vanilla
soy milk because it tastes good.
I'm going to make tofu out of it.
Well, you're going to have kind of a dessert tofu at that point.
So I wouldn't necessarily suggest doing that.
And also make sure you read the ingredients.
And it's not hard to just let these soak for a day and make your own,
and you're going to get the best texture and the best flavor out of it.
Okay.
And once you make the soy milk and you're heating it up, does it need to
be at boiling before you put in the GDL?
So this was just at a simmer.
I let it come up to a boil.
The only reason why you would do that is just to make sure
it's pasteurized at that point.
It doesn't really affect it, other than you're bringing it all the
way up to a correct temperature.
You're also going to mix in that GDL really easily.
And then it's going to set into your mold.
Yeah.
And what's amazing about kind of, you know, doing this and we've done it
quite a bit here in the kitchen is just how fast this process is that I
think, you know, people who are not chefs and who haven't like worked a lot
with tofu before, when you think making tofu, you're thinking is like really
laborious, long, artisinal process.
And it certainly can be that, but you can also just do it like in a minute, too.
And if you don't want such a fine tofu, which we can serve this
within minutes after making it.
But if you don't like that extremely fine, custardy flavor or texture you
can take, I just take some paper towels.
I square them up and I put them right on top and I wrap them.
And then you change it out two or three times over, you know, a 24-hour period.
And then you get something like this.
So this is a slightly thicker product.
It still has all the creaminess of a quality silken tofu.
And as you can see, it's, it's really beautiful.
And if I were to cut just a small amount of this off, you can see it's smooth.
You don't want it to be gritty.
You don't want it to be clumpy.
That's an extra firm.
And that has the texture of like overcooked scrambled eggs.
Okay.
Which is good for certain things.
You can definitely make a nice, you know, extra firm tofu.
But this recipe is for silken tofu.
I don't have too much in the vein of making extra firm tofu.
I've never gone too far because I really like silken tofu.
And I prefer this in all of my recipes.
Okay.
And this looks really delicious as well.
And once they've made this, how long can they keep it in the fridge?
You can keep it in the fridge, I always suggest seven days.
Seven days is the best way to keep anything that you've made at your home.
It is a wet product that has protein and it's exposed to oxygen.
So those are the three things that are going to eventually cause some
sort of foodborne illness, if you just leave it in the refrigerator
forever, but seven days is fine.
And I mean, it makes this recipe, if you use the entire recipe, makes
about a pound to two pounds of tofu.
So that's pretty good.
If you do two or three meals a week with it, you'll be fine.
And I had kind of noticed when you pour the soy milk into the container,
you didn't like use a whisk.
There's no like stirring, so there's no need to like, kind of
go the extra mile to be evenly distributed before we move it in here.
Yes, exactly.
So we're going to move this out of the way and we're actually going to get into
the two things that we've made here.
Yes.
So if we were to use this silken tofu, yep.
All right.
So what we made here is a vegan-friendly Mapo tofu, which
sometimes it does contain ground pork.
And if you wanted to put ground pork in it, it's totally fine, but on our website,
the blog, this recipe is completely vegan.
So it has Sichuan peppercorns.
It has our tofu that we made here.
And you can see, there's a piece of the tofu and it's in this
really spicy sauce that we make.
This is my favorite dish.
It, some people say, oh, what's your favorite thing to cook?
That's a hard question to answer for a chef.
This is my favorite thing to cook.
It's easy.
It's incredibly flavorful and it makes a really beautiful rice dish.
And you can use all my favorite things from chili oil to
Sichuan peppercorns to tofu.
Yeah.
And it, it's absolutely delicious.
We've all had it.
And it's yummy.
Yes.
And I'm going to eat that entire bowl after and sweat profusely.
So, but that being said, we can go on to our last.
And what are we making here, Janie?
Oh, I am going to challenge you to say it.
So we're making a dish that kind of, I grew up with in China, back in the early
eighties and it's called a tofu nao, and it literally translates to tofu brains,
but obviously no brains are involved.
And it's basically like a soup, but with like very freshly made, very soft
tofu and it's just absolutely delicious.
So it's kind of like a nostalgia food.
It's something that I've never seen while I've been here in the US.
So if someone knows where to get it, let me know.
But know when Scott, when I knew that Scott was making tofu, I
was like, definitely like make some of this, at least just so
I can eat it, but nothing else.
And then I tasted it.
It's fantastic.
It's a very easy way.
So if you want it to go from pot to a dish, you can have it almost immediately.
So the only things I'm going to use is I have some chicken
stock here that's been salted.
Nothing else added to it.
I have in the bowl, is you're able to purchase, if you can find pickled mustard
root, use that, but we have to pickled mustard leaves and that's totally fine.
They have a really nice punch of flavor.
Now I have a little bit of sweet soy in there as well.
The chili oil that you may see in the bottom of this comes
from the pickled mustard leaves.
Yep.
So you can find this in like most Asian grocery stores.
And if you don't find this, like really the idea is that you have this like light
fresh tofu in a really light broth with some like savory spicy elements and it
can be really anything you want it to be.
So I'm going to try and break into this now.
Let's see.
Ooh, there it is.
It's all soft and jiggly.
Yes.
So that's exactly what you want.
You want it to be extremely smooth.
Just put a little bit in there.
Yeah.
That's the freshest tofu.
And then you add in a little bit of chicken broth.
You can mix it up.
Here you go, Janie.
Thank you.
All yours.
A bit of nostalgia.
And a question that we sometimes get is GDL always used with tofu or making tofu?
And it generally needs some sort of acid, but GDL is the most common because it is
not as acidic as, you know, citric acid.
So it's not going to make a sour tofu.
It's just going to make a really clean flavored tofu.
Yeah.
This is delicious, as is the Mapo tofu.
We're not eating it yet, we've saving it for Scott for lunch.
It's my lunch.
But we hope that, you know, we were able to show you in this
WTF, just how easy this process is for you to get the freshest tofu
that you could possibly imagine.
And that basically anybody can do it.
So from here in the Modernist Pantry test kitchen, I'm Janie Wang.
And I'm Scott Guerin.
We hope you enjoyed today's episode.
And if you want these great recipes and these awesome ingredients,
first, you're going to have to like, comment, and subscribe.
And then, you're going to go to blog.modernistpantry.com, where
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And until next time, we'll be here in the Modernist Pantry test
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