I Tried the Internet’s Most Viral Tofu Recipes

Tofu or not tofu? That is the question. Tofu is one of those things. People that love it, love it. And the people that don't love it, don't know how to cook it. And also don't understand how anyone could love it. I realized that for most people, they see tofu and they're like, oh, it's like eating the color beige. No, if you don't know how to prepare it, yes, it's bland, it's boring, whatever. If you do know how to prepare it, man oh man, can you elevate your cooking and can you get a powerhouse of vegan protein? What you'll learn about tofu is that you just need to learn, A, how to cook it, because there's different kinds, and what sauces to pair it with. They all have a different function. They can all recreate different textures. Some of them are much more meaty and meat-like if you know how to prepare them. There are so many things you can learn. I'm just so excited to broaden your horizons here. I'm also excited to sniff these out and be like, are these really worth all the views? So today we're gonna scan the most viral tofu recipes. I found them, they have millions of views. Millions and millions of views. So we gotta check them out. I wanna see if we can learn from the masters here. Why did these do so well? Does it taste good? We'll find out. You know I'll tell you the truth. So I don't wanna waste any time. We've got four solid recipes today and some of them are from some great creators that I really like, so let's hop into it. So the first one we're gonna start with a recipe by Eat With Hank, Air Fryer Crispy Tofu. This video has 2.5 million views. 2.5 million views, okay? That's 2.5. It's simple, we're starting easy and we're gonna build out to more complex dishes, okay? But if you have a block of tofu and you're like, what do I do with this thing? What is this? How did this get here? This is for you. This is simple, it's quick, it's using items you probably already have in your pantry. So for this one we're using firm tofu. I'm going to slice it open and I'm going to cube it. His are like relatively larger cubes. Firm tofu, different than extra firm. The more firm, the more protein usually is what I find. But for this firm one, it's like, yes it's firm but it's not so firm that it's gonna struggle to absorb a marinade. I like this. I love firm tofu, especially when we can get like a nice crispy skin around the outside. That dichotomy of the chewy and the crispy, that's the magic right there. So let's grab our tofu and let's dice it up. Where's my knife? Ha ha. At last, my arm is complete again. We're going to, what am I doing? Where am I? Oh yes, time to drain this. Tofu-tally time to drain this. Sadly, I have countless tofu puns, which I will be torturing you with throughout this entire video. If you have any, please drop in the comments so the next time I use tofu in anything, I can bash you over the head with those as well. I'm going to do half of this block. He did it into big cubes, so I am too. That way, if we do the larger cubes, then it'll give it more body inside. Body, yaddy, yaddy, yaddy. Inside so that you get that contrast between the crispy skin and the chewy middle, the soft, chewy middle that we all have deep down. Today's a weird day, huh? So we're going to add all of this marinade stuff to our container and then we're going to shake it up. So we're going to add onion powder, garlic powder, smoked paprika, three tablespoons of sesame oil, and three tablespoons of soy sauce. Now we do the fun part. Cue the music. You know what time it is. It's everybody now. Let's take a look at how this looks. The fact that it broke up like that a little bit, I'm okay with that because that's going to cause for a more complicated textured outside once we add our cornstarch, which we're about to do. If you want to preheat your air fryer, do it now, 370 Fahrenheit. That's 175 degrees Celsius, I think. Now we're going to toss some cornstarch into this. That's going to give us that nice skin. Get in there. We just want it to be coated in it. So we're going to do another shake, shake-a-thon. Don't be shy. Don't hold back. You got to get that energy out one way or another, people. Things are crazy in the world right now. Oh, I basically... Okay, maybe don't... It's like a reflection of my state of mind. Okay, kind of pulverized it a little bit, but you know what? Times are hard, okay? You don't have to go quite as hard as I just went. Maybe do it in a bowl in a normal way. Whoopsies. I still think it's going to taste great. I'm so used to using extra, extra firm that I forget that firm tofu is kind of fragile. Well, that was my mistake, but that's okay. I'm going to put some parchment paper in here. Just a little bit of a mess. I made a mess. I made a mess! It is what it is. These little pieces are going to crisp up too, so there. So these are going to air fry for about 20 minutes. So we're really going to let them think about some stuff in there. And that's good. We all need to think about stuff. I'll check on them at the 10 minute mark. We'll see what they've been up to. I'm particularly curious about this mess I made and how that's going to hold up, but we'll see. To the air fryer you go. We've got our first one here. Yum. Yummy-o. This looks delicious. We got some crispy pieces. We got some not as crispy pieces, but I think you'll notice is what I mentioned before, which is that it's like crunchy on the outside and then it's like nice and soft and delicious on the inside. Oh boy. Oh my. Oh my, my. That is good. Weirdly enough, the little crispy parts are like my favorite. This is delicious. It's so simple. I would probably toss this in some sauce. I would let the tofu marinate for a little bit longer, but if you're in a pinch and you just want to get this show on the road, this is an excellent way to start preparing tofu. I love the taste of tofu. I've developed that. Some people don't. Lucille, you hungry, baby? Come here, you little freak. You finished all your food. That's very good. She's a very picky eater, so it's a big deal when that happens. You're the smallest dog in the world. You're very small. This dog is minuscule. She's a microscopic dog. If you're new, this is easy and approachable. Simple, it's quick. Maybe it gets your foot in the door. However, you definitely taste a lot of tofu. I love the taste, so that's fine with me, but if you don't, you may not understand why anyone would eat this. I also would add a little salt to the outside. I love this. This, to me, is delicious. I think if you let the tofu marinate a bit longer when you air fry it, then you could coat it in your favorite sticky sauce. You could do a general sow, an orange chicken with this. It would be great for that. I love it. Tofu can good. This is like a base. Add whatever you want to that. Marinate the tofu longer and it'll be more flavorful, but if you like plain old tofu taste, you'll be happy with this. There are so many ways you can save money. Your budget for your food and your groceries is a huge one. Another way is to literally earn money while you're spending it. What? What do you mean, Merle? Well, let me tell you about the sponsor of today's video, Upside. Wait, before you skip ahead, it's free. It's free and you can earn money. You're already spending money on eating out, groceries, gas. I know you are. Upside is basically a really easy way for you to get some of that money back. You find an offer near you, you claim it, and you just shop like you normally would, and then you get to earn cash back on the things you were gonna buy anyway. Kind of like a fun little game. I try to gamify my life in any way, shape, or form, and it is actual cash back. I know what you're thinking. This is a, what? What do you mean? Yes, it's actual cash back. You can actually cash out directly to your bank account. Did I mention it's free? You can also cash out to PayPal or as a gift card. So if you want to try it, scan the QR code or go to the link in my description, download the free Upside app and use code MERLE, and you can get an extra $10 cash back on your first restaurant or grocery purchase. Thank you so much, Upside, for sponsoring this video. Let's get back to it. Let's kick it up a notch. We're gonna do the Korean vegans recipe. This video has like 1.4 million views, but basically what it is is a spicy garlic tofu. If you're a tofu skeptic, this one's for you, because we're going to the top of the top, and we're gonna scrounge around up there for gold. If you don't know the Korean vegan, you should absolutely check them out. I linked all of the creators in the description below. She's filled with so much wisdom and also just incredible recipes on Instagram, on YouTube, everywhere you can find people. Sometimes I sit and listen to her wise words, and it's just so relaxing and calming. All right, let's hop into this. So I've got some high-protein tofu, and I'm going to drain this first. I'm trying to be better about using reusable paper towels. I've got these reusable ones. I'm gonna squeeze the water out of this, try to be less wasteful, and you know what? Call me crazy, but I go ahead and I just use this wet towel to wipe down the surface. I know it'll smell like tofu, but I'm gonna clean the whole thing later anyway, so whatever. We're gonna slice this up. Half-inch chunks, she said. We're gonna toss these into our bowl, and we're gonna toss some cornstarch on that thing. Two tablespoons. Cornstarch, again, is gonna give us that crispy edge. And a pinch of salt. See, tofu, great form of protein. You can get like 70 grams of protein per block. So this is good, we're gonna set this aside. Now we're gonna do a quarter of a red onion. If the dice job isn't perfect, I don't sweat it. She said you can use jalapenos as a substitute if you can't use the exact pepper that she used, so I am. And I'm removing the seeds, most of them, even though I do like spice, but I've made the, oh wait, I'm gonna get jalapeno hands, ****! No! Shoulda used gloves. Dangerous little peppers. Last thing is to chop up our damn scallions. Got all our vegetables done, now we're gonna mix together our sauce. The maple syrup. Gotugaru, which is red chili peppers that are like minced up. Soy sauce. White wine vinegar. I already know this is gonna be good, I can just feel it in my bones. Some mirin, which is sweet garlic. And then a little bit of potato starch. Now we're gonna mix that up. Get a pan, we're gonna use some vegetable oil. Four tablespoons or so of vegetable oil. We're gonna toss the old diced tofu over the hot oil, which you know I don't like, but I'm gonna do it anyway. And I do it for you! So we're gonna toss our tofu that has the salt and the cornstarch over that oil. We're gonna do like a little shallow fry. Get it nice and warm in there, get it hot. And then we're gonna toss it in, crisp it up, and then we're gonna add everything in. So these look amazing. This is like a restaurant. This is awesome. I am so excited to try this, I'm not even gonna postpone it or ramble on it. Oh my God. Oh my gosh. Yum! Holy moly, this is good. This is like an 11 out of 10. This will convert any tofu hater, any of them. Hands down, that is one of the best tofu dishes I've ever had. Sometimes I get self-conscious about cooking for people, I don't know why. I literally do it for a living. But if anybody didn't like this, I just wouldn't trust them. There's no scenario where I serve this to someone and they don't like it. If they do, they have to leave. So actually the pressure's on them. Thank you to the Korean vegan, that is insanely delicious. Go check her out. Time to move on to the next recipe. We're going to be doing one from Sarah's Vegan Kitchen. This one has 1.1 million views and it's tofu lettuce wraps. I don't know about you, but in college, I used to go to P.F. Chang's all the time. I went to college at Hofstra University on Long Island. And man, I would do some things for those lettuce wraps. I used to go there way too much. I used to get the lettuce wraps and I would get fried bananas. Oh man, it's all coming back to me now. Anyway, we're going to make lettuce wraps. And this version, we're going to do extra firm tofu. We're going to crumble it up and we're going to fry it for about eight to 10 minutes. We want extra firm because we're going to crumble this up. Crumbling and baking tofu is one of my favorite ways to make it. But this time we're just going to saute it. This is easy. We just have fun with this. We just crumble this with our little meaty mitts, our paws. Wow, this is really relaxing. This was like meditative as heck. This is all crumbled up, looking good. Now we take it over to the stove. She said a wok or a nonstick skillet. We're going to fry this up in some vegetable oil over on the old stove. We're going to pour this over the stove. And in the meantime, we're going to chop up our veggies. We're going to chop up some water chestnuts. Water chestnuts are a huge part of lettuce wraps. They add a nice crunch and a little sweetness to everything. Chop up some white onion. We're going to mince some garlic. We're going to mince some ginger, scallion. After we've browned our tofu, we're going to fry our aromatics. Some vegetable oil. And then we're going to fry that up for like three to five minutes. Add a little soy sauce too. And while that's happening, we're going to mix together our sauce. And for that, I'm just using a vegan oyster sauce. It uses porcini mushrooms. I got it at Sprouts. It's sweet. It's tangy. It's salty. It's very good. We're going to add our water chestnuts with everything as well. And then that's pretty much it. We just serve it up in some lettuce cups and I'm going to top it with the green part of our green onions for garnish. Pretty easy. Pretty straightforward. I just did the whole review of this thing and it wasn't recording my audio. You know how that makes me feel? Makes me feel like I want to scream. I'm not going to, but I want to. What I was saying is that this looks like restaurant quality. P.F. Chang's who? Tofu, forget about P.F. Chang's. It's delicious. It's dark in here because it's late now, but water chestnuts, green onion, lettuce, crunchy. Tofu, vegan fish sauce, salty, sweet. Ginger, water chestnuts, sweet. Soy sauce, salty. Need I say more? Great for hosting. Terrible choice of lettuce on my part. This is hardly holding it together. I will need to do this again with better lettuce. This was stupid. I'm just scared of lettuce right now because of the thing that just happened, but all things considered, delectable. Really nice. It tastes like a restaurant meal. Would be great to feed guests because it makes a huge batch and it's pretty quick and easy to make. I think I'd probably add some red chilies. I didn't add the chili paste. Duh, that's what I forgot. Whatever, next time. This is really good and this is easier too. Great meal prep, hello? You make a bunch of this tofu crumble, pull out a couple leaves, call it a day. Zip, zap, zop, it's that easy. How about that? Anyway, it's getting dark. I'm gonna go on a hike now and I'll see you tomorrow for the last one, including frozen silken tofu. I'm as intrigued as you are. New day, new dawn, and we're gonna do the last recipe. This time we're gonna try a technique I've never tried before, which is saying something because I've done nearly everything you can do to tofu. I mean everything. Imagine something, I've done it. Imagine something else, been there, been there, done that, now imagine something. Okay, actually we could do this forever. Except for I have not frozen silken tofu. Here's the issue, I don't remember which one is the one that I froze and then defrosted, so I'm gonna open both of these and it's a good opportunity. Let's look at it as a learning moment for us to see how much of a difference it really makes when you freeze silken tofu. The other thing is the tofu that they used in their video looks very different than the silken tofu I know. The silken tofu I know doesn't have layers, so this might be a disaster, but we're gonna try it anyway because honestly I'm so intrigued. So let's open both of these and see which one is the one I froze. God forbid I mark it with a marker. That looks like just plain old silken tofu to me, so this better look different or I'm gonna scream. Ooh, I think I know which one was frozen. Wait, this is cool. Ah, oh my God, it feels like a jellyfish. Whoa, I'm actually so happy we can compare these because those are layers. Oh, I just spilled it, bean juice all over the place. This is something new, people. I don't know how I'm gonna get the water out of this without destroying it, but we're gonna find out. This is the one that we didn't freeze. This is the one that we did freeze. What on earth is this? Get a load of that. Wow, that is something else, man. That is something else. It feels like the ice that forms over shallow pools of water on the sidewalk. Do you know what I'm talking about? Like really thin ice, that's what this looks like. I just don't know if I can trust that I'm gonna be able to get any water out of this without it just falling apart. I'm so intrigued by this. And if you haven't already, feel free to preheat your oven to 375 Fahrenheit. All right, let's see what this looks like when we dump it out. Okay, that came out a lot easier. There's no way I can press this, though. It's gonna fall apart, right? Look at the difference. This is really, really cool. This is like pudding, and this is something else. How's that for specific? Okay, unfrozen, frozen, soft, metal. That's what that looks like. Whoa, it's like a fragile butterfly wing. I feel like I'm doing surgery on a butterfly. Oh yeah, it's releasing the water all right. Well, this is completely submerged. This towel is completely submerged in water, and to the point where I'm like, am I just pushing water back into it? This is a process. Life is a process. Let's fold it in half, and then give it the old squeeze-a-roo. That's what they call this in the kitchen, in professional kitchens, the squeeze-a-roo. I'm a professional. This is just forming a mound of soy. This is a lot of work, to the point where I feel like I should just get tofu skins, Yuba, instead of doing this. Place that down. Mix together our marinade, which is two tablespoons of soy sauce, two tablespoons of vegetable oil, two teaspoons of smoked paprika, garlic powder, quarter teaspoon curry powder, and now we mix it. Look at that. Feels like glaciers or something. Wow. This is so cool. Silicon tofu, I thought I knew you. Pulled the rug out from underneath me, didn't ya? This definitely has more of a chicken-y texture. Chicken-y, another professional term in the chef world that I totally belong to, cooking in my own kitchen with no certification. Now I'm gonna go like this. I don't want it to break apart, so I guess I'll gently spoon it. Gently spoon your tofu. You'd be on a vegan retreat, and you're healing yourself through cooking. Gently spoon your tofu as you explore the complexities that lie within you. Do I need to make that retreat a thing? Spread it out. That didn't come up with very much, did it, for a whole block of tofu? You know how different kinds of tofu have different protein content? Firmer has more, and silicon has less? Now we know why, because look at how much less tofu this produces than an extra-firm tofu. It's all starting to make sense. I'm connecting the dots of the bean curd world. Did I just throw that on my floor? Oh, I almost forgot the cornstarch. Whoopsies. Okay, we'll dust it on here. He put a lot of cornstarch, so, or they put a lot of cornstarch. I have no idea who made this, other than the name of the channel, because nobody's yapping away like I do. And somebody in the comments was like, straightforward, to the point, no life story, just cooking, exactly what I want. And I thought, man, you would hate my channel. That's fine. People are allowed to have preferences. All right, now we bake it. 30 minutes. In you go. Whoa. Whoa, hello. Are we for real? Oh, look at that. What the hell? I didn't know you could do all that. Are you seeing this? Oh my goodness. This is insane. I didn't know silken tofu was built like that. Wow, that is good as. It's so soft in the middle. So crunchy. I have been changed. This is my new favorite thing. I'm gonna dress this up in different sauces. Put a little top hat on it. This was fun. Thank you so much for watching. I hope you had a good time. Please like and subscribe if you aren't already. And if you have a favorite method of cooking tofu, drop it in the comments, because maybe I'll do a roundup of your guys' favorite tofu meals. I feel like that could be kind of fun. Because clearly, I thought I knew it all, and I was wrong. Well, I hope you're having a good one. Let me know which one of these recipes you're gonna try first. And thank you to all the creators. You'll be linked below. Have a wonderful day. You're doing so well. Ciao for now, mi lady, mi lord, mi person. I hope you have a fine. I gotta stop. I'm gonna drink some water, and I recommend you do the same. Okay, goodbye now. Whoop, I got caught to this. Bye-bye.