As I men­tioned before, I was recently liv­ing at my par­ents’ house for two months. I asked them when it would ever be inap­pro­pri­ate for me to go “home” and live with them, rent-free, with meals included. Luck­ily for me, they answered,

“never.”

So until I’m too old to do so, I’m going to be doing things like going back home to my par­ents’ house when I’m sick and using their Vita­mix to make tofu.

My friend Sarah from RecipeRe­lay first started me think­ing of home­made tofu, when she cre­ated her own batch last year. As much as I eat the stuff, I never really con­sid­ered it pos­si­ble to try mak­ing it at home. In the U.S., it’s so com­mer­cially sold that we often for­get it’s meant to be eaten fresh and hand-made. So with Sarah break­ing it down and pro­vid­ing a link to a step-by-step recipe I could fol­low, I was super inspired. But the task was still a bit daunt­ing, and with tofu so cheap at the mar­kets in China (as lit­tle as 10cents for a small block!), I never had the urge to try it myself in my own kitchen.

That, and I lacked a Cuisi­nart or Vita­mix to blend the soy­beans– a cru­cial step in the process for mak­ing tofu.

So with a few extra hours on my hands (and an arti­cle on tofu due the next day), I spent an after­noon at the home of my par­ents, tak­ing advan­tage of an industrial-strength blender, exper­i­ment­ing with soybeans.

I did plenty of read­ing prep before­hand. When DIY’ing in the kitchen– whether it be for marsh­mal­lows, ice cream sand­wiches, pop tarts, fig new­tons, or gra­nola bars- I def­i­nitely rec­om­mend doing your research and read­ing through a few dif­fer­ent recipes before rolling up your sleeves. In my case, I read and re-read Sarah’s expe­ri­ence, which directed me towards this web­site and very help­ful recipe. Given my time and resources (which was a lot and many, respec­tively), I was also able to make a trip to the local library where I sat in the cook­book aisle for an hour and skimmed a few books about soy and tofu

With my tofu research ses­sion fin­ished, I finally under­stood the very basic process that pro­duced tofu: a prod­uct of fresh soy milk, sep­a­rated into curds and whey, and then pressed. The magic ingre­di­ent that would pro­duce curds in the “milk” of the soy­bean extract was called the coag­u­lant, a cru­cial part of all tofu-making processes. The coag­u­lant used in tra­di­tional tofu mak­ing is a Japan­ese ingre­di­ent called nigari, a con­cen­tra­tion of var­i­ous salts that remain after the crys­talli­sa­tion of salts extracted from sea­wa­ter. While vis­it­ing the neigh­bor­hood Japan­ese super­mar­ket one after­noon I peeked in the salts and dashi aisle, and became over­whelmed at the selec­tion of salts and pow­ders, none of which were labeled in Eng­lish. Luck­ily as an alter­na­tive to nigari, Epsom salts (mag­ne­sium sul­phate), fresh lemon juice, or apple cider vine­gar can also be used to pro­duce the same cur­dling effects. The vari­a­tions in the results are seen mainly in the tex­ture of the tofu, and only slightly affect the taste. I decided to use some apple cider vine­gar that was already in the pantry.

I pro­cured a pound of organic soy­beans from the bulk grains aisle of Whole Foods to start my tofu-making adven­ture. After soak­ing the beans overnight and wak­ing to their plump soy­bean glory the next morn­ing, I got busy boil­ing, grind­ing, cook­ing and strain­ing the soy­beans. Fresh soy milk, as easy as that.

Press­ing for­ward, I fol­lowed instruc­tions care­fully and put my soy milk back on the stove, adding the coag­u­lant (in my case, apple cider vine­gar), and stir­ring as advised. As expected, a pot full of steam­ing soy milk soon sep­a­rated into small curds and whey. Lit­tle Miss Muf­fet, you’d be proud!

The curds were spooned into my own home­made tofu press – a rec­tan­gu­lar plas­tic Tup­per­ware con­tainer with holes punched through­out the bot­toms and sides, lined with cheese­cloth. With the curds weighted down with a bevy of canned ingre­di­ents, I let time do its job.

A short and sur­pris­ing 15 min­utes later, I checked on my result. There it was: the curds had com­pacted into one small rec­tan­gu­lar form. Home­made tofu, firmer than I had imag­ined, smaller than I would have liked, and a far more crumbly than I would have pre­ferred, but nev­er­the­less it was tofu!

For the step-by step recipe, jump over here.