Why Freezing Tofu Will Change Your Cooking Game!

[Music] so welcome to hot Thai Kitchen so the other day I told my husband to put away all the groceries and freeze all the protein by which I meant all the meat next thing I know I opened the freezer and there was my tube of silk and tofu looking very bizarre like this after taking a deep breath and reminding myself that tofu is technically protein and that I shouldn't be mad I decided to cook the tube of frozen tofu and then I posted about it on Instagram and on YouTube shorts where it went viral on both platforms so to my surprise people seem to be really interested in the concept of freezing tofu that or the concept of husbands accidentally doing things I'm not sure which is true but I thought it's a concept worth exploring further in a longer video so in this video I'm going to freeze two types of tofu silken and firm so that you can see the two extremes I'm going to show you what happens and why you might want to do it on purpose and how to cook with them first let's just see what happens to the tofu I'm just going to stick both of these in the freezer in the packaging just like my husband did then you just let it thaw and putting it in water will help it thaw faster once it's thawed you can cut the tube of silk and tofu right through the middle careful of any water squirting at this point and slide it out and you're going to want to have a towel handy because a lot of water is going to come come out and check out this crazy texture and all the layers compared to the unfrozen one that is super smooth and because of all of these holes all the excess water is now just pouring out of the tofu now the firm tofu you're going to see a ton of water pouring out when you open it but it's packed in water anyway and there's actually not that much more water compared to a pack of unfrozen tofu but when you press on the frozen tofu you can see how much more water comes out compared to when I press unfrozen tofu there really isn't that much water that's coming out when you cut it the difference is not as obvious as the soft tofu at all but if you look closely you can see teeny tiny little holes inside that were not there before the holes are much smaller in firm tofu than in silken tofu because it had much less water to begin with now let me explain why this happened with an analogy it's not a super scientifically accurate analogy but it'll work well enough for our purposes imagine that tofu is made up of millions of tiny little water balloons the balloon itself is made from soy protein and each balloon is filled with water that is how water was able to stay suspended inside the tofu in the first place and as anyone who's ever forgotten a can of Coke in the freezer knows when you freeze water it expands and if the container is full it can explode that is what happened to our soy balloons now once the tofu thaws the water leaks out leaving a bunch of saggy empty soy balloons behind hence all of the holes and the layers that are created other than triggering Trypophobia and I apologize if that happened to you um there are advantages to creating these tiny little holes one of the biggest challenges of cooking with tofu is getting it to absorb absorb flavor you can coat the outside with all the sauce in the world you bite into it and the inside usually still just tastes like plain tofu but with all of these holes that are now created sauces and broth can penetrate inside making them much more flavorful the other Advantage is that now that the tofu has less water it is sturdier and are less likely to fall apart this is why a lot of people love to use frozen tofu in Hot Pot where the pot is constantly being agitated and with the firm tofu when we fry them it will also become chewier as well now I've got a bit of a rant coming up just to give you a warning but it's important if you go searching on the internet for frozen tofu you're going to come across people who claim that freezing tofu will will help it develop a meat likee texture claiming that this is how you make tofu taste like chicken now as a chicken eater I can 100% confirm that but it does not okay and anyone who actually thinks that it does maybe haven't had chicken for a while yes it is chewier than it was before with the firm tofu but you're not going to fool anyone that this is a meat product not even close what I can say is that depending on what you do with it it can taste less like tofu because all the holes the tofu cannot absorb flavor so the tofu flavor itself is drowned out a little bit more but it does not make it taste like chicken or even have texture like meat and here's my tofu Ranch because that was not the rent um it has always bothered me that in North America people tend to see tofu only as a vegetarian or vegan substitute for meat which is not at all what tofu was meant to be yes you can use it as a substitute for meat and I do too but it should also be treated as a great ingredient in its own right and utiliz in all kinds of dishes not relegated to just vegan and vegetarian versions of other things in fact growing up in Thailand we always paired tofu with meat in the same dish because of the contrasting texture you've got chewy meat and silky soft tofu and that helps make the dish more interesting and because of this view that tofu is supposed to be a meat substitute you've got people doing all kinds of hacks and all sorts of things to make tofu be more like meat rather than embracing Tofu for the great ingredient that it is this frozen tofu is delicious but not because it is now more meat-like but because it now can absorb more flavor and therefore it is a more flavorful piece of tofu let's give tofu the respect it deserves # respect the tofu and with that out of the way let me show you how to best cook with previously frozen tofu for the silken tofu I'm going to cut it into pieces it's less fragile than it was but it's still quite delicate so you still need to be gentle with it my favorite way to use frozen silk and tofu is in broth these soups to let it soak up all that flavorful broth the soup I'm making here is called Suki Nam also known as taii Sukiyaki which is one of my favorite Thai street food dishes I'll link to the recipe below but you can add it to any kind of soups or stews or anything that's got lots of sauce just add them at the end after all the seasonings have gone in and then let it simmer for just a few minutes so the tofu can heat through and absorb the flavor super easy right just make the soup and add the tofu at the end this is like one of my favorite street food dishes and you can even see right you can see the tofu and you can see the that the flavor has penetrated like I don't even have to tell you oh by the way I wanted to point out that the end pieces of the tofu as you can see here is not going to have as much of a texture as the pieces in the middle this is because when things freeze the faster it freezes the smaller the ice crystals and the smaller the ice crystals the less the damage to the structure of the protein this is why the outside of the tofu which froze the fastest will have less pronounced holes in texture whereas the middle is where you're going to get the most the biggest holes cuz that took the longest to freeze so you didn't do anything wrong not that this is exactly as predicted o it's already like a lot firmer than silken tofu normally is like Silk and tofu usually like you look at it and it falls apart right like this one actually felt like I had to push down on it a little bit M man I can't even describe it to you it is entirely different every like inside the tofu the flavor of the broth is there it's a little bit firmer it doesn't have that creamy silky texture that you might want so like when my husband froze a tofu that's what I wanted I want the creamy I wanted the silky but this is good too it's just two very different things right but the transformation is pretty unbelievable all right next we're going to deal with the firm tofu which I think is more interesting because that's where the versity really kicks in for the firm tofu we need to do a bit more prep first we're going to press it gently just to get the bulk of the excess water out we will dry them again after cutting so don't be too aggressive and destroy the tofu at this point then cut it into pieces slightly bigger than you want them to be at the end because they will shrink lay them on a thick kitchen towel put put another towel on top and gently press them to dry them out further the drier they are the better they will Brown now that we got them as dry as we can we can either pan fry or air fry them to prep them before using in a recipe pan frying is going to give you a really nice crust and color and you want to use high heat for this just a few minutes on each side but I do recommend you do all four Sid so this can be a bit fiddly the the not fiddly way is to air fry them generously brush the bottom of a plate with oil then place the tofu down and then brush the top of the tofu with more oil place them in the basket making sure there's space around all the pieces and then air fry them at 400° f for about 12 minutes at around halfway through you can turn them over or if that's a little too fiddly you can just give them a shake and hope most of them turn over whatever method you use the reason we want to fry them first is one you create that chewy texture that makes all the difference to the tofu and two it will become much sturdier so you can toss them aggressively without them falling apart now if you don't fry the tofu you can still just throw it directly into soups or stews like we did with a soft tofu it'll still be great it just won't have that chewi right and now that you've got the fried tofu here are three different different ways you can use them one you can toss them in a sauce here I've got a sweet chili lime sauce that I use on my popular hot Thai chicken and simply toss the freshly fried tofu until it is well coated but don't overdo it cuz the sauce is pretty intense by the way this sauce also works great with not frozen fried tofu as well two you can toss them into any kind of stir fry here I'm making my ppri king recipe which is a slightly sweet red curry past stir fry with mcro lime leaves and some long beans although I'm using green beans today and I'm just throwing the tofu in at the very end and toss it until it's well coated by the sauce giving it a minute or two to heat through and absorb the sauce and that is it finally you can let it simmer in a sauce or a stew and take advantage of all those holes that can now suck up all that flavor here I'm making K Palo which is a five spice stew with eggs and pork belly it is an absolute classic that I recommend recommend you try links to all of these recipes are in the description below I have never been so excited to eat so much tofu not a word of a lie but everything here looks so good most excited about this hot Thai tofu oh so good the exterior of the tofu is chewy and I mean it's been sitting here a while so it's not crispy but there's like there's like a hard element to it so there's lots of texture going on and the thing that is the most incredible about this is when you bite into it there is Flavor inside which is not a thing the tofu can do previously right like when I first did this recipe with frozen tofu I was skeptical because the sauce is quite thick and I didn't know how much of it would be able to penetrate inside but to everyone in find my family's surprise they were like huh and my husband literally said is that tofu I was like yeah I know it's so flavorful inside right and now the stir fry forget the beans no one cares about the beans today okay again same story and if you look at it it's not like the inside is completely red with with sauce so it doesn't look like it will have but I think as the tofu was simmering in the sauce enough liquid went inside to make a difference like I'm pressing the tofu in my mouth to see like what kind of liquid comes out and indeed the liquid that comes out has flavor in it and now the thing I've been looking forward to the most this is my childhood favorite if you haven't made it you got to go and make it with normally this would be made with tofu puff which is fried tofu that's that's Airy in the middle and we use that tofu so that it can absorb the broth but if tofu Puff's not available cuz it's not a a commonly available item unless you go to an Asian grocery store you can try frozen tofu instead like a sponge it like it soaked up all of that sauce that broth you got to have some pork belly too much tofu in one meal that's good pork belly is good tofu is good but pork belly is good and that is it I hope you found that interesting and if you do cook with frozen tofu do share with us how you use it we could all use some more ideas here and a special thanks to all of our patreon members who help support the show and if you want to know what that's all about how you can get bonus recipes and get in direct contact with me I'll put the link in the description below the recipes for all the dishes that I made today will be in the description below as well thank you as always for watching and I will see you next time so

Channel: Pailin's Kitchen

Views: 120,482

Keywords: Hot Thai Kitchen, Thai food, Thai cuisine, Thai cooking, Thai, Thailand, Bangkok, street food, Southeast Asia, Asian cooking, Asian food, Asian cuisine, Asian recipe, Thai recipe, Cooking, cooking show, how to cook thai food, how to cook

Id: QijDgL1PI5o

Length: 15min 18sec (918 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 22 2024