Crispy Baked Tofu

Simple Crispy Baked Tofu

Prepare to fall in love with Tofu with this flavor packed Crispy Baked Tofu by Carleigh Bodrug aka Plantyou! This tofu can fit a variety of roles from replacing paneer in a curry to working great in a burrito. It’s delicious, easy to do, and affordable too.

A dry sense 

Tofu is a very tender food, which makes it hard to crisp.  There’s some key things we can do to make sure we’re getting a good clean crisp on our tofu. Tofu comes in two basic forms, cottony and silken. From there, you’ll find varying firmness to each tofu, which decides the water content of the block. For our purposes, we want a cottony extra firm tofu.

In order to achieve our ideal crispness, we must understand crispness. Crispness comes from the dehydration of the exterior proteins, while the browning comes from the Maillard reaction. In order to achieve both crispness and browning, we need to remove as much moisture from the tofu before cooking. This won’t dry out the tofu, the interior will still be moist and tender, it’ll just mean the exterior is nice and crisp. 

The easiest way to dry out tofu is to slice it up and lay it out on a cutting board with towels on top and then press onto it with some weight. The logic being that with more surface area in the slices, we’ll be able to remove the water faster as opposed to trying to press the entire block. 

To Marinate, or not to marinate, that is the question

While this recipe calls for a marinade, we are not actually marinating the tofu in a traditional sense. You will simply toss the tofu in the marinade to get it properly coated and impart the flavor. If you marinate the tofu for an extended period of time, you’ll find the tofu browns too fast, and the interior of tofu will taste like the raw marinade which is less than ideal. 

Special thanks to Carleigh Bodrug aka Plantyou for the recipe. You can check them out at their website, or check out their instagram.