Tofu has been a dietary staple in China for over two thousand years and has permeated the rest of Asia for about a thousand years. In the recent years, tofu has gained popularity in western culture. Tofu is basically made from soybean, water, and a coagulant. The coagulant agent can come in many forms, the most popular for Chinese tofu is calcium sulfate (also known as gypsum). In Japan, the traditional method of making tofu involves using 「nigari」 as a coagulant which is essentially magnesium chloride. 「Nigari」 is made from boiling sea water and harvesting the water after the sodium has crystallized. In North America, calcium chloride is a common coagulant additive.
One of these days, I will attempt to make my own tofu. But for now, let’s go on with pressing tofu. Why press tofu? There are a few good reasons. First of all, even store bought extra firm tofu is quite fragile and can easily break when cooking, especially stir frying. After pressing tofu, it helps maintain shape. Another reason is that tofu usually has a lot of water and doesn’t allow any flavors to penetrate. Pressing tofu squeezes out the water and allow the tofu to soak up plenty of flavors that you throw at it like a sponge. Lastly, regular tofu’s texture probably similar to cottage cheese. However, once you press the water out of the tofu, it tastes more chewy and has a firmer bite, almost meat like.
Given that the pressed tofu sold in Asian markets contains a lot of additives and preservatives (not to mention pricey) – I’ve decided to make my own pressed tofu. It’s actually rather simple. Just need to find two flat surfaces and sandwich the tofu in between, add increasing pressure, and allow the water to escape. Usually takes anywhere between 30 minutes to a few hours depending on how much pressure you apply and how dense you want the tofu to be.
With these pressed tofu, I’m making a five spice pressed tofu to be used as a stir fry in another dish. You don’t need to add flavor to the pressed tofu, you can use it as is.
Equipment you will need:
- two flat surfaces – I’m using 2 cutting boards but you can also use 2 sturdy baking sheet or two plates or even just straight on your counter top
- wrapper – cheese cloth / paper towel / kitchen towel – this is use to wrap up the tofu to maintain the structure during pressing so it does not fall apart
- pressure inducer –
- gravity induced – any thing heavy such as stones, bricks, books, gallon of water, canned goods
- accelerated – I used a ratcheting strap from my tool box which can speed up the process since it can add a lot more pressure than using standard 『weights’ and waiting for gravity to do its work
Step 1: The key is to use firm or extra firm tofu.
Step 2: Drain the water and lay out the tofu on the cutting board
Step 3: Wrap the tofu in cheesecloth
Step 4: Sandwich the tofu together
Step 5: Apply pressure – a decent amount of water should be extracted
Step 6: After squeezing out a lot of water in the beginning, I slowly tighten the ratchet every fifteen minutes by a click or so and you can see that the tofu went down to about 1/3 of it’s height after an hour or so
Out of 4 tofu, the total amount of liquid expressed fits into one tofu container
Step 7: Unwrap the tofu from the cheese cloth
I cut one of the pressed tofu to show that most of the air and water has been extracted leaving behind a dense pressed tofu with a good chew and can withstand some beating in any recipe.
Step 8: Store refrigerated in a tightly sealed bag
Note:
I was able to get the tofu to about ⅓ it’s original height and a lot of water has been squeezed out. Depending on how you want to use the tofu in a recipe, you can stop at ¾ or ½ height which will give you stability but still allow the tofu to sponge in marinades. I’ll be cutting this tofu into thin slices to do a Chinese stir fry so I need it to be very dense to withstand lots of stir fry action in the wok.
Also, instead of pressing one tofu at a time, I’m doing four at a time to save time and besides, the pressed tofu keeps in the fridge for a good week.
- 4 extra-firm tofu
- wrap tofu in cheese cloth
- apply pressure for 4-6 hours, dumping out the water periodically until tofu is about ½ of it's original thickness
- tofu is now ready for recipe or cut up into a salad
Can the pressed tofu be frozen for later use?
Usually the home-made pressed tofu can’t get enough of the water out of the tofu so that if you freeze the tofu, the texture will change and taste a bit spongy. Maybe if you press it longer and make sure all the water is out, then you should be fine freezing it. I’ve done it with the store-bought pressed tofu without any issues. ~Mike
How do you collect the liquid and keep it from spilling in the counter?
I put a cookie sheet underneath to catch the dripping. I’ve recently discovered a Tofu Press that works a lot better! ~Mike