<< Assault on Klahane Ridge

07/24/12 - Home Made Tofu

We first had artisanal bean curd in Honolulu. It was absolutely delicious, far better than any tofu we had bought in a store. We've been trying to locate some in Port Angeles or the Seattle area with no success, so we decided to make our own. It's not particularly hard, but it is a bit messy. We used about a pound of dried soy beans and three quarts of water. That meant three messy rounds in the food processor making up the mixture, then straining it through cheese cloth. That got us a fair bit of raw soy milk.

We brought the soy milk to a boil, let it cool to 190 degrees, then added two teaspoons of nigari. Nigari is a mineral salt, related to epsom salts. Within a few minutes, the soy milk had started to curdle and, maybe ten minutes later, we had big, cloudy curds floating in soy milk whey. We strained out the curds in a cheese cloth and pressed out the excess liquid using a little tofu press. Thanks to the miracle of high speed photography, you can see the final block of tofu in the photo before we Kalebergs got to it.


It doesn't look like much, but it tasted great.

Keywords: food, kale