Maybe this will be interesting to others, maybe not, but I wanted to share my experiment!
My husband has a smoker he loves and has wanted to smoke me something for a while, so I decided to try smoking tofu. I wasn’t able to find much on how it should be done other than 1 blog post and one Reddit comment, and they had conflicting advice. I decided to experiment with freezing and not to see how much of a difference it made.
Method 1: Freeze for a week
I froze a brick of extra firm tofu for a week, thawed it, then drained it.
Method 2: don’t freeze
I took this extra firm brick straight from the fridge and drained it.
After this both methods are the same:
I then pressed both bricks between two sheet pans in the fridge for ~18 hrs, changing the towel half way through. The drying method was: wrap in paper towel, set on towel, set towel on bottom baking sheet, cover with another towel, set baking sheet on top, put in fridge and cover with whatever heavy ish containers of food were in there.
In the morning I cut it into the pieces you see in the pictures. I scored the pieces that were frozen and the non-scored are from the fridge. Smoked at 225 for an hour.
Conclusion: the freezer ones were smokier, but just barely. The tofu got dry, almost like a jerky but not crumbly or unpleasant. I will definitely marinate first next time, I just wanted to isolate the smoke factor without hiding the flavors this time.
by puffyhoe
4 Comments
Thanks for sharing! I want to try the same with different kinds of wood in my old weber bbq. This is very helpful.
I smoke for at least two hours, sometimes more. I flip halfway through because both of my smokers (offset and electric) will dry the top faster and I want a more consistent pellicles. And yes, marinating is a must. I’ve done both wet and dry brines with more salt than many traditional BBQ recipes call for.
How did you consume it? I put mine in a dandelion green curry to make my take on saag paneer.
Brilliant! I can’t wait to try this, thank you!
Yes.