For soft tofu (or lazy people) you can skip pressing by blanching the tofu in boiling salted water for 2 minutes before cooking. Just drain and cover with a tea towel while doing the rest of your prep and then use as normal. The blanch will season the tofu and get rid of the grassy taste.

To aid takeup of flavour you can also freeze it still in the packet. The expanding ice will create holes inside the tofu for sauce to penetrate.

Note: Neither of these work with vacuum-packed Tofu as it is too dense.

Other uses:

Tofu works well as a chicken substitute in salads.

Potato starch gives a crispier crust for fried tofu.

Silken Tofu can be blended into desserts or sauces for a creamy texture.

Favourite recipes:

1. Dubu-jorim

2. Chili Tofu (vegan version of Indo-Chinese Chili Paneer)

3. Mapo Tofu

4. Salt & Pepper Tofu

5. Smoked Tofu facon (goes with so much)

Honestly a tofu scramble is pretty good. Squish the tofu, break it up, mix it with spices, toss some chopped veggies in a wok, cook for a bit, add the tofu, heat up, eat.

Tofu cooked in hotpot(火锅) with a spoon of laoganma peanut chilli oil/chili crisp on top after. The laoganma being the key.

soup is perhaps my favorite application, like hot and sour soup.

Tofu deli “meat”: thinly slice firm tofu and marinate in a container for 30 minutes to overnight. Marinade can contain soy sauce, liquid smoke, maple syrup, EVOO, pepper, whatever else. Once done marinating, use tongs to add to hot skillet with high smoke point oil (peanut or avocado). Grill until you get some nice browning and tofu is hot. Add to sandwich with vegan mayo and pickled onions

marinaded and air-fried is a go-to

Don't need to press, freeze or do corn starch

• Get extra firm tofu

• Tear into small half-nugget sized pieces and throw into large bowl. Don't be concerned about the tofu crumbling, those tiny pieces will be cooked as well and crisp up really nicely.

• In the bowl season with salt, pepper, cooking oil, msg and rub it in. You can eat raw tofu, I eat a piece to make sure it's seasoned well.

• Give nonstick pan a small layer of cooking oil and set heat to 5 or 6 if your pan can handle it. The tofu is not being deep fried and will absorb most of the oil in this frying process.

• Once oil is hot throw in the tofu and cook until crisp on bottom, flip and crisp each face as well. The cooked surfaces should feel crispy on your spatula. You can flip and crisp faces multiple times to avoid burning.

• Once it feels almost done (and at this step the tofu should have absorbed a majority of the initial cooking oil) add some vegan butter on to the pan, about 1 teaspoon

• Sprinkle some more seasonings i.e salt, msg, pepper, they'll absorb alongside the vegan butter.

• Flip and move around the pan until it feels crispy and absorbs the butter and remaining cooking oil.

• Serve with seasoned rice for example with rice mixed with Mang Tomas which can be found in the international aisle or Asian grocery stores (the North American version is vegan, it's basically a Filipino sweet instant gravy in a bottle) or put it into vegan instant noodles like Indomie Mi Goreng or Ichiban Chow Mein Yaki Soba.

You can also dip it into Mang Tomas or a sweet agave-garlic (like honey garlic) dipping sauce

I eat tofu multiple times a day, I used to freeze the tofu and doing the fancy corn starch frying, but I found it to be unnecessary and too time consuming. If you learn how to get a good crisp, the water evaporates and the tofu will absorb the oils/vegan butter/sauce you used in cooking. MSG and vegan butter makes a huge difference. This method can be done in around 30 minutes to an hour and only makes 2-3 dishes.

You can get more elaborate with it but this is the baseline method that I use to cook the tofu.

Here's a photo of my method, in this particular one I did a hybrid of slicing the tofu with a knife and tearing. It reminds me a bit of Filipino lechun.

mapo is tofu's highest calling by far Tofu is nice in Japanese curry as well

silken tofu as a replacement for cream cheese on a bagel. add some tomato and fry up some onions, drizzle with olive oil and bam delicious vegan breakfast

Preppy Kitchen has some good Tofu wings.

Taco filling: Crumble extra firm tofu in large nonstick skillet on med-high to let it dry out a bit first then add oil to fry. If it isn’t dried before adding the oil then the texture will be more like scrambled eggs. You could press the water but I’m lazy and cooking it an extra 10 minutes isn’t gonna kill me. Break up any large chunks with a wooden spatula. Add a taco seasoning packets mixed with water. Can be eaten hot or cold like in a salad. Serve with

Shred, spice, then bake or airfry and use in sandwiches

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KB-ZbJ2t6ew

Its FIRE!

Fried is good, especially with buffalo sauce imho

Also mapo tofu