Let’s Cook: Sesame Tofu

If you follow me on Facebook, then you might have seen my recent food post of my “sesame tofu”. I normally receive great feedback and responses/likes for my vegan meal posts, but I think this one has been my most liked and highly requested recipe yet! I’ve decided to get serious about my food blogging, step it up a bit and share more of my recipes 🙂

So, let’s cook!

Ingredients

• (2-4) Pack of Extra Firm Tofu – depending on how many you are cooking for, I would recommend 2 for a family of 2-3 and 4 for 4-5 
• Fresh or Frozen Broccoli
• Jasmine Rice
• 2 tbsp Garlic Powder
• Louisiana Seasoned Crispy Chicken Fry (chicken batter mix) – yes, this is vegan 🙂
• 4 tbsp Seasoning Salt
• La Choy Stir Fry Teriyaki Marinade
• 1/2 cup Brown Sugar
• 1 tbsp Sea Salt
• 1 tsp Crushed Red Peppers
• 1 tbs Montreal Chicken Seasoning
• 1-2 tbsp Sesame Seeds
• 1-2 tbsp Green Onions (optional)

Note: Seasoning amounts may vary. I never measure my seasonings, I just add to taste. You can modify this to your own taste 🙂

Directions

1. The first thing you want to do is press the water out of the tofu – yes, it comes in water. To press the water out you will want to wrap it in paper towel or a clean cloth and gently press on it so that the water comes out and the cloth or towel absorbs the water. I have laid a heavy pan on it before to help or I sometimes do it by hand. You will want to press it enough so that it’s not soaked like it is when it comes out of the packaging. Your tofu will still be a little wet which is okay because this will help the seasonings to stick 🙂
2. Cut the tofu block into rectangular pieces like the above image. Then you will want to cut each rectangle into a smaller rectangle which will give you the small nugget sized pieces.
3. Put all of your small nugget sized tofu pieces into a large bowl and sprinkle seasoning salt. Some of these ingredients aren’t listed above, but I also sprinkled some garlic powder, onion powder, cumin and Montreal chicken seasoning – this is optional. These are just some of my staple seasonings.
4. I let the seasoned tofu sit while I prepare the rice and the broccoli. Follow the instructions on your packaging for cooking rice. For the broccoli I like to put mine in the oven. Heat the oven on 350. Lightly coat the bottom of a pan with olive oil and place your broccoli on top. Drizzle a little olive oil on top and sprinkle garlic powder over that. Put that in the oven for about 10-15 min just so that it’s nice and hot!
5. Now for the fun part – in a frying pan heat up some oil, enough to coat the bottom of the pan. Pour the Louisiana chicken fry into another bowl. Put some of the tofu in the bowl and coat each piece. Place the batter covered tofu into the pan and let it cook until it’s golden brown and crispy. Repeat this step until all your tofu is cooked.
6. While your tofu is frying, you can prepare your sesame sauce. Pour the La Choy teriyaki sauce into a bowl. Fill the [La Choy] jar with water about half way and pour it into the bowl. Add brown sugar, sea salt, crushed red peppers, montreal chicken seasoning and sesame seeds (not pictured). Heat this up in the microwave for about a minute or so until it is hot.
7. Once your tofu has finished frying, your broccoli and rice have finished cooking and your sauce is all nice and hot, your meal is ready!

You can garnish your sesame tofu with more sesame seeds and green onions (not pictured, but it adds a nice flavor). This was so fun to make! If you’ve never tried tofu, then I would suggest giving it a try. Most people either shy away from it because they don’t know what to do with it or because they’ve had some before and it wasn’t well seasoned, but I love it because it’s a blank canvas. You can turn it into whatever you want, the possibilities are endless! I turned this completely bland tofu into delicious chicken flavored crispy goodness that my whole family loved 🙂

This is my own personal recipe that I decided to try. I stumbled upon the Louisiana seasoning on accident because the seasoning I was originally looking for was all out, but that’s the beauty in this new lifestyle – you learn and try new things along the way! If you try out this recipe, please let me know. Please tag me! I’d love to hear how it turns out for you.

Until next time…