This Sandwich Shows Just How Epic Tofu Can Be

Hi, I'm Nisha Vohra. We're in the NYT Cooking Studio kitchen, and today we're making some pretty epic sticky glazed tofu sandwiches. We've got chewiness from the toasted bread, fresh crisp element with our bright pickled vegetables, nice indulgent creaminess from the aioli. The tofu, it's sticky and sweet, and it's got something you can just sink your teeth into. Summer eating opportunities are often divided, like you're an omnivore and you eat hamburger and hot dog, or you're vegetarian or vegan and you eat frozen veggie burger and lettuce. This sandwich is something for everyone. It's hefty, it's hearty, it's delicious, it's super flavorful, and it's perfect for summer. I've got two blocks of extra firm tofu, and starting on the shorter side of the block, we're gonna slice it into half-inch slabs. You don't want any that are super thick and some that are super thin. Our tofu is quite watery at this point, so we're just gonna press these slabs for 15 minutes, wrap them in a dish towel, paper towel, whatever, and then you wanna grab something heavy to press down, like a few cookbooks, or you could do another sheet pan and put something heavy on top of that. The reason we're pressing the tofu is just to get out some of that excess water, so when we go to cook it and add the glaze, it'll absorb the glaze a lot better. In the meantime, we can work on charring our jalapeno peppers for the aioli. First things first, you wanna take off the stem so it doesn't burn on the flame, and then you can get a gas flame to medium to medium-high heat, and then you just wanna position the pepper on a part of the grate where it will stay without falling down. You might need to just, like, play around with it to figure it out, and you can char both at once if you feel confident with this method, and then the goal is to just turn these every 20 to 30 seconds until they're charred and blistered all over, and you can char your jalapenos in a lightly-oiled cast-iron skillet over medium-high, and if you don't have one of those, you can also do it underneath the broiler of your oven. The charring process is gonna add a little complexity of flavor, the spiciness, but you're also gonna get smokiness, very reminiscent of, like, summer barbecue flavors. This is what you're looking for. You've got some charring and blistering in most of the spots of the pepper. Probably won't get every single spot, and that's fine. The tofu has been pressing for 15 minutes, so now we can prepare it to go into the oven. You can feel that the tofu is definitely drier than before, which is great, and now we can just arrange it on a parchment-paper-lined sheet pan, and this needs a little bit of olive oil, so we'll do about a tablespoon on the top. Salt to season. Just rub it in, give the tofu a light massage. We'll flip it over and do the same thing. The reason I'm baking the tofu instead of, say, frying it on the stove is that you can fit a lot of tofu on one sheet pan. If you wanted to fry it, it would have to be done in two batches. If you wanted to make this for a bigger group for a cookout, you could even do four blocks of tofu, two on one sheet pan and two on a second sheet pan, put them in the oven, set it and forget it. While the tofu bakes, we can make everything else for the sandwich, so it's very hands-off. Once the tofu is lathered up, you can spread the slabs out without touching. You've got the body oil, you've got the sea salt scrub. It's basically a spa day for the tofu. And this is gonna go in a 425 oven for 30 minutes. The first thing we're gonna prep while the tofu works its magic in the oven is our pickled vegetables. We're just gonna thinly slice a few Persian cucumbers and the cutest little red onion I have ever seen. The Persian cucumbers have less flesh, less water, a little bit more of a crisp sweetness. But if all you have is an English cucumber, you can definitely use the same weight amount of that, and that's totally fine. Just a thin slice would be good. Vertical cuts, not horizontal. Horizontal slices are good for burgers. Vertical slicing is better for most other things. The brine for the pickled vegetables is really, really simple. It's just distilled white vinegar, a little bit of salt, and a little bit of maple syrup. You could also use sugar, but we're gonna use maple syrup in our glaze later. Give that a whisk, then just plop in the vegetables. The distilled white vinegar is quite sharp, but the tofu is gonna have a bit of sweetness from the glaze, so the combination is gonna be a really nice contrast. And then just toss everything with your hands. Your hands are your best utensil. Make sure you wash them. There's nothing that can approximate what your hands can do. You can feel how wet the vegetables are. You can feel the perfect texture. You can just coat everything better. You can make this several days in advance. Up to five days after that, it'll start to soften. Just store them in the fridge, and then pop them out when you're ready to make the sandwich. And then we'll set these aside to pickle. If you can, from time to time, remember to just give it another massage. Great. If you forget, it's also fine. The next component we'll work on is our charred jalapeno aioli. So I've got some store-bought vegan mayo here. This is both a cheater's aioli, because we're using store-bought mayo, but also a fancy mayo, because we're adding charred jalapenos to it. So it's very quick, but also very delicious. Some salt, not too much, because the mayo should already have a bit of salt. And then we can't have aioli without some garlic. The recipe calls for two to three cloves. I have been told by some that I am very heavy-handed with garlic. So if you like a moderate amount of garlic, you can do two cloves. And if you think there's no such thing as too much garlic, you can do three cloves. Give this a nice whisk to incorporate everything. And then we'll fold in the jalapenos. I like to just flatten them a bit with the flat side of my knife. Just makes it a little easier to slice. And I like to chop them pretty finely so that you don't get big pieces in the aioli. You could blend everything together if you want a smoother consistency, but I think a little rustic texture is nice. Now, jalapenos, like a lot of chili peppers, can vary in how spicy they are. So if you're not sure how spicy your pepper is, start with half the peppers, taste, and then add more as you want. It's really good, but I feel like it could use all of the pepper, so we're going in. And you can refrigerate this until you're ready to use it. Now, the glaze for the tofu is incredibly simple. Three tablespoons of pure maple syrup and three tablespoons of Dijon mustard. That's it. Well, there's also salt and pepper, but it's really a two-ingredient glaze. I used to eat a lot of honey mustard chicken as a child, and this reminds me of that, but, like, much tastier. I like to brush the glaze onto each slice. It takes a little extra minute or two, but if you just pour it all over, you're gonna lose a lot of glaze to the pan, and then it'll start to burn in the oven. The reason I'm glazing the tofu now towards the end, as you can see, the tofu's holding onto the glaze because it's evaporated some of that moisture while it baked in the oven. If we were to have put the glaze on from the start, it would be more of a liquidy situation and the tofu wouldn't be as flavorful. This is gonna go back in the oven for a final seven, eight minutes until the glaze starts to set and almost caramelize onto the tofu. Assembly time. We have some beautiful ciabatta sandwich rolls here. We have lightly toasted it in the oven. You can use whatever sandwich bread you like, but make sure you have something that's sturdy enough to hold all the toppings. It's taste test time. This is ticking all the boxes of what I think a good sandwich should be. It's indulgent, hearty. We've got the sweet tofu that's really nice with the smoky, spicy aioli and the bright pickled vegetables. The toasted sandwich roll is bringing everything a chewy crispness. It just works together so, so well. If you've ever been disappointed by the plant-based options at a barbecue or a cookout, this sandwich is definitely here to change the narrative. Vegans, vegetarians, omnivores, everyone is gonna enjoy this sandwich, so definitely try it out. You can find this recipe and many more at NYT Cooking. Thanks so much for watching. Bye.