Once You Try Cooking Tofu Like This, You'll Never Stop Making It

When you hear high-protein food, you're probably not thinking of rich and creamy Indian curries, but that's exactly what we're making today, a luxurious, generously-spiced tofu curry that is so good, we've been making it pretty much every single week for the last few months. We're gonna get started with our tofu. Oh, no, I should not have opened those here. Now, instead of pressing our tofu, we're gonna tear the tofu into chunks. The tofu has this craggy surface texture, and that means the marinade's going to absorb into every little nook and cranny, as opposed to a cube or triangle, which has a relatively smooth surface. As I mentioned, we're not gonna be pressing the tofu to get out excess moisture. Instead, we're gonna be using the hot saltwater soak method. This is four cups of water that I just brought to a boil, and I'm gonna stir in a fair amount of salt. This is two tablespoons of diamond crystal kosher salt. You're gonna pour this mixture on top of the tofu, and it might sound counterintuitive, but the hot saltwater is actually going to remove some of the excess moisture from the tofu while also seasoning it from within. And I'm gonna let this soak for 10 minutes. While the tofu soaks, we'll start on the marinade for the tofu, and there are essentially three main components to the marinade. First, we've got some raw cashews here, and I'm gonna cover them in boiling water, which will soften them up, and this is gonna give our marinade a lot of luxurious creaminess and body. For the second part of the marinade, we need some spices. I'm gonna be toasting some whole spices. I'll walk you through them. If you don't have them, you can use ground spices, and I've included substitutes here or in the blog post below. I'm using one whole cinnamon stick, two Indian bay leaves. These are called tej pata, and they're a bit different than your standard bay leaves. If that's all you have, you can still use them, and the end results will still be tasty. We're gonna use three whole cloves, about six green cardamom pods, but just the seeds from inside of here. That's about a quarter to a half teaspoon of seeds, a tablespoon of whole coriander seeds, and a teaspoon of whole cumin seeds. Get your frying pan over medium heat. I've added all of the whole spices except for the cumin seeds just because those will burn a little bit quicker, and you'll notice I'm stirring pretty frequently because you don't want the spices to burn. It's been about two minutes, so I'm gonna go in with the cumin seeds. The cumin and coriander seeds are both a few shades darker, which is a good sign, so I'm gonna take this off the heat so nothing burns, and we'll just set these aside for now. All right, it's been 10 minutes, so let's go drain our tofu. Tofu is very delicate, so be sure to gently drain this instead of just dumping it into the colander. I'm adding the tofu to a towel so it can just dry off and not be super wet when it's time to marinate it. In hindsight, I probably should have done this over there at that counter, so I wouldn't have to now move the tofu because I have to move on to the next step, so bear with me while we do a little YouTube magic. The third main part of our marinade is sauteed aromatics, and we're keeping it pretty simple, just a large yellow onion, five cloves of garlic, and a knob of ginger. I've got my large frying pan, and I'm gonna get it over medium heat with a few tablespoons of oil. Oil is looking nice and shimmery, so we'll add the onions. Pinch of salt. And the goal here is to cook them until they're nicely brown, which is gonna add a lot of sweet, savory flavor to our marinade. If you do start to see some uneven browning, just add a splash of water. It's gonna bring the overall temperature of the pan down a bit, and it's gonna help the onions brown more evenly. It's time for our garlic and ginger. Starting to smell really good. And I'm just waiting for the smell of the raw garlic and ginger to cook off. Should take about 90 seconds, maybe two minutes. I'm gonna take this off the heat, and now we're ready to blend our marinade. I'm starting with a half cup of water in the blender. We'll add in our cashews, which I've drained and rinsed. Browned onions and garlic and ginger right in there. I'm adding a little bit of plant-based yogurt. This is a creamy coconut yogurt. It's really common in North Indian cuisine to marinate a protein like chicken in yogurt and toasted whole spices that have been mixed together. We're essentially doing that. We're adding some cashews for extra richness. Of course, we're using tofu to keep things plant-based. Salt and pepper, of course. A couple of ground spices as well. We've got a teaspoon of turmeric and two to three teaspoons of Kashmiri chili powder. It's got this beautiful red color. This is gonna be the main source of heat in this recipe. It's gonna be pretty mild though. I'm also adding two tablespoons of cornstarch. This is gonna help the marinade bind to the tofu without it slipping off. I have tried it without it, still tasty, but the marinade doesn't stay on as well. And finally, our whole spice blend that we toasted. If you're wondering, are bay leaves edible? Yes, they are edible. We don't normally eat them, but if you blend them up like this, totally edible and delicious. Do the same for the cinnamon stick just to make it easier on the blender. Time to blend. It'll take a few minutes of your time, but I promise the results are worth it. It's looking good. If yours doesn't blend quite as well, you can add an extra splash of water, but try not to add too much because then you'll have a liquidy marinade. Just pouring the marinade into the large bowl I used earlier to soak the tofu. You can see it's got this luscious, beautiful, thick texture. And now we just plop the tofu in. A silicone spatula is very helpful for gently coating the tofu in the marinade so you don't crush it. You can marinate it for up to 24 hours or as little as one hour. Overnight usually works for me, but for purposes of filming, I'm gonna pop it in the fridge for an hour and then I'll see you back here when it's time to cook. You wanna get a large nonstick frying pan over medium heat. And then just two teaspoons of oil. You want a very light coating. I'm adding half the tofu so I don't overcrowd the pan. You technically can add all of the tofu at once, but it'll be really tightly packed and you're not gonna get that golden brown sear that we'll get if we cook it in two batches. It's important to let the tofu cook undisturbed for the first four to five minutes before flipping. That's how it's going to develop that nice golden brown crust on the bottom. Oh baby, that looks good. Look at that. Whoa. Once your tofu has this beautiful brown coating on most of the pieces, you can take this off the heat and we'll do the second batch. Tiny bit more oil. And the second batch should cook a little faster because the pan's super hot. Get that first batch of tofu in. And as you can see, it's got this gorgeous golden brown crust on it, but it doesn't quite yet look like a curry. And that is where our next step comes in. I'm measuring out a cup of soy milk. I like using soy milk because it's high in protein. It also has this nice creamy texture and a pretty neutral flavor. It works really well here. Whoa, look at that. That does not look like tofu. Get the milk right in there. One of my favorite ingredients, kosori methi. These are dried fenugreek leaves. They're often used in North Indian dishes towards the end to give it that restaurant quality flavor. They really do a lot here. And the key is to crush them between your fingers because that releases the aroma. A little bit of salt at this stage and some pepper. And you want to let this simmer for three to four, maybe five minutes until it starts to thicken and you have this incredibly luscious curry texture. I'm gonna kill the heat and then chop up some cilantro for our garnish. It looks so good. You can serve this with rice or flatbread. I just have some store-bought pita that I microwaved. If you're feeling fancy, you could do some naan. I've got a recipe that I'll link here or here, I'm not sure. But for now, let's give this a taste. That is unreal. It's so creamy and luxurious. If you want to make it at home yourself, I've got the full printable recipe on the blog. Scan this QR code or check the link in the description box below. Thanks so much for watching. Bye.