Easy Lentil Tofu (Soy Free and SO GOOD!)

hey everyone welcome back to my kitchen for another video so today I'm so excited to show you how to turn these red lentils into tofu [Music] so while I love cooking with traditional soy tofu I know not everybody does some people have allergies or don't want to eat it for other reasons and I'm constantly getting asked for Alternatives so today I'm going to show you how to make this amazing red lentil tofu so you're not going to believe how easy this is to make so it is not a traditional tofu regular soy tofu takes a little while to make this is actually really quick and really easy and you don't need any special equipment like any presses or anything like that and it really is only two ingredients it's pretty much just red lentils and water but you guys know me I can't just have my food totally plain so I do kick it up a notch with a couple other ingredients and I show you what else you can put in there as well and different ways that you can cook it at the end so yeah I'm actually so stoked on this it is so good I think you all are going to really like it so let's get right into it oh yeah and just quickly before I start I did not invent this however this is my own adaptation of a bunch of different red lentil tofu recipes that I saw online so a lot of them seem to be overly complicated and I just made this like as absolutely simple as possible with as few steps as possible so I don't think that you're going to find an easier red lentil tofu recipe out there anyways let's get right into it so the first thing you want to do is measure out one cup of split red lentils so we're going to be using a ratio of three to one water to lentil ratio so you could obviously scale this up or down accordingly and then you just want to rinse the lentils pretty well so you'll notice the water gets pretty frothy so what I like to do is just kind of scooch that off the top and then discard the water and do this a few times until the water is pretty clear next bring that three cups of water to a boil and then add it to the lentils you want to cover this and let it sit for about 15 to 20 minutes so while you're waiting you might as well make use of your time move your body a little bit try doing some dips in the corner of the kitchen maybe some l-sits maybe some body weight squats I don't know get creative but get moving foreign so after you've let it soak for a little while you want to just throw everything into a blender so you don't need a high powered blender like this Vitamix or anything any standard blender should do and that is kind of the nice thing about doing it this way is that it softens the lentils so you don't need to you know use a expensive blender but here's what I have so that's what I'm using if you want to make this totally plain you probably just want to add a little bit of salt just to help with the flavor so I'm just going to add probably about three quarters of a teaspoon of salt to this and you can also add some other flavor as well so I tried cooking this a bunch of different ways and tried adding you know a bunch of different flavors to it and what I found the best was just to add a little bit of the twin pillars some garlic powder and onion powder so I'm going to add about three quarters of a teaspoon of each to this [Music] and then just blend until it is all Blended up [Music] foreign and I find that red lentils are pretty peppery so you don't have to add any pepper to it and it's kind of nice when it's like a really smooth and uniform consistency so I did try adding some other herbs like this no salt seasoning and it was good and I'll show you guys that at the end but I think it's just like this to kind of keep it pretty plain next you want to get a saucepan on the stove put it to about a medium heat and then dump that mixture in there so this is kind of the most labor-intensive part and you're gonna have to keep whisking this so you want to like just keep stirring it and you'll notice that it'll start to boil and bubble that's when you want to turn it down to a medium low heat or even a low heat and then just keep on stirring it because if not It'll like stick to the bottom and yeah it's just not what you want so keep stirring it and then you'll notice that it gets really thick so after about five six minutes it'll start thickening up and you want to just keep going until it is very thick at about eight nine minutes is when it's going to be ready so it gets so thick that you can pretty much just like stand the Whisk up in it and it'll stay there so once you're at this point you know it's done and then you want to take it off the heat and pretty quickly get it into a glass baking dish like this because it tends to thicken up pretty quickly so if you don't do this fast it makes it a lot harder and then just smooth that out and you don't have to worry about any oil or butter or grease or anything in here because it comes out so easily once it's cooled like you guys are going to be amazed and then it's just ready to go into the fridge so you want to leave it to set in there for at least about two hours but of course you can leave it overnight if you need to and then it is ready to go so because I am smart I made some yesterday swap that out and here is the finished product all right so check it out I told you it was easy to get out and look at that it slides right out and all in one piece so there you go that is one huge slab of lentil tofu and it's honestly like two dollars worth of lentil so it couldn't be any cheaper pretty easy as you guys saw and let me cut into it show you look at that holds together well it's just like tofu it's amazing obviously it got a bit of a pink color to it um yeah that is good it's pretty neutral I'm glad that I put the garlic powder and onion powder in there because it does give it a little bit of flavor but you can basically just use this as you would any tofu now so I tried a few different ways so I tried to do like a quick marinade and then saute it on the stove and I also tried to saute just some plain pieces and they were both really good and then my favorite way was just to cut it into chunks and air fry it so I tried a couple different things like the same sort of Asian marinade and it was really good but I also just did like a pretty plain sort of salt and pepper one and that one was actually my favorite so that's what I'm gonna do with this and then I'll add it to the rest of my meal show you guys that so I'm just gonna add a touch of oil just so that the salt and pepper sticks to it shouldn't take too much and I'm going to be using this Urban mirror or herb Amare if you're as fancy as I am herb sea salt so good and then just a bit of pepper I'll show you guys that herbed one that I made yesterday so let's have a closer look at it here's the seasoning that I used for that one like I said it's just an organic no salt seasoning and it's kind of like a bit of a chunky seasoning so I thought that would be kind of neat and it is really good but part of the reason why this is so nice is just like the silky smooth like creamy texture that it has and you'll see when you air fry it kind of like puffs up a little bit just like tofu but this one is really good still and of course the flavor options on what you add to this are absolutely endless I was thinking even like a sweet one would be good with like some cinnamon and maple syrup and that sort of stuff so that might be something I'll try in the future but yeah let me cut into this and I'll give it a taste actually it's really good it's better the next day than it was yesterday I just put in the fridge for a couple hours yesterday and tried it and I was like ah I don't know but wow it's actually just so good who would have thought you could make your own tofu like this you know just out of lentils without a press or any like crazy equipment or anything like that just like you know 30 minutes worth of work and a couple hours in the fridge it's crazy to me all right so I'm just gonna throw together like a quick salad to have that air fried lentil tofu on top of whip up a quick dressing and I'll show you guys the finished product all right so here they are straight out of the air fryer and they even crisped up this is awesome check it out nice [Music] and that is official [Music] all right so there it is all finished and plated up man it looks so good I'm proud of myself I can't believe that that was just plain old lentils just a little while ago now look at it so if you're looking for a sauce ideas you probably know but I have a ton of different sauces on the YouTube channel so just search simnet nutrition sauces and you'll see a whole bunch of options come up this is the classic tahini dressing it's really easy to make let me get into this um it's all good all right so how to describe it I would say it doesn't taste a ton like lentils do like it definitely is a really neutral flavor it does have that sort of peppery kick but it's nice and creamy and just like tofu it takes on other flavors really well so of course you could like marinate this or whatever you want to do and it would be just awesome all right so that's probably it I think you are gonna really enjoy this recipe once I made it I was so excited to share it with you all so if you do make it definitely tag me on Instagram at simnet nutrition you know I love to see your meals that have been inspired by my cooking so definitely like the video If you enjoyed this recipe let me know what you thought in the comments down below are you gonna make this what sort of spices are you gonna add to it oh yeah one last thing if you do enjoy my cooking and you want to support the channel I do have a recipe ebook I put out not too long ago called easy vegan Comfort meals although this is not in it you now have the recipe for this but it'll be in a pinned comment at the top of the comment section and also in the description box down below so definitely check that out if you want some more vegan recipes so I will see you soon with another video subscribe so you can see more from me and thank you all for watching

Channel: Simnett Nutrition

Views: 656,204

Keywords: simnett nutrition, vegan recipes, easy vegan meals, red lentil tofu, lentil tofu, soy free tofu, how to make tofu, easy tofu recipe, high protein recipe, at home tofu, easy vegan recipe, split red lentil recipe, what to use lentils for, how to cook lentils, How do I cook lentils?, how do you make tofu?, easy lentil tofu

Id: yIBCSf0e_6k

Length: 10min 27sec (627 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 18 2023