Notes on Pickling Tofu

This has grown into a little bit of an obsession. I started with pickling tofu just to see how it would taste, but I have been impressed by the changes in texture. After a couple weeks it approaches the taste and texture of a hard feta. Here are some notes:

- Using silken tofu gives you some weird results. It starts off tasting right (like a feta cheese) but with the same silken texture, a combination I found to be a little off-putting. However, fry it with some kind of coating (I used lentil flour) and it's delicious. After about six weeks, the tofu hardens up and is great.

- Using extra-dense tofu to start with quickly yields something with a texture like a hard cheese, and which slices will for a sandwich.

Last night I pulled a decent batch out of the incubator. It's 100% soy bean. This time I picked up a bag of soybeans at a market in Chinatown while I was there buying persimmons. They're a little smaller than the ones I get at Whole Foods bulk, maybe a different grade or strain?

The great leap this time, though, had more to do with the de-hulling process. Instead of rubbing/kneading the beans by hand to pop off all the little rubbery hulls (that would otherwise block the mold from the beans), I followed instructions I found in a YouTube video that I can't find again and used the dull dough blade in the food processor to knock the hulls of the beans after soaking them for just 10 minutes.

It worked. The least pleasant, most tedious step of making tempeh is now a matter of a few minutes in the Cuisinart. This feels like a revolution, like when some farmer took a look at the ox and said, 'what if HE pulls the plow?'

I made some okara tempeh. I had decided to try making tofu again, which resulted in some okara (and a whole lot of not-quite-right tofu). When you make tofu, you soak and then grind up soybeans. You then filter  any remaining solid bits of soybean out of the resulting soy milk, and those leftover bits are called 'okara.'


You can feed the okara to livestock, but you can also add tempeh starter to it and make tempeh. I tried twice before (the other times I made tofu). One batch was too wet and ended up rank and slimy. The other batch came out great - very tender, fluffy. The key, I figured, was drying out the okara just enough - harder to gauge than with split soybeans for normal tempeh.

I think I over-dried this latest batch. It tasted okay, but it was, well, dry, and took a whole lot of oil to fry up in the pan; it just kept on soaking it up like a sponge.

A couple months ago I was telling a couple friends at work about how I like to make tempeh, and both requested some the next time I made it. Of course I proceeded to screw up the next batch (I was trying a peanut mix, and the mold ignored the peanuts, knitting the soybeans around the peanuts together but leaving the peanuts loose and alone in the matrix. I think I overcooked the peanuts), but a few weeks later yet, I made another batch of just plain soybean tempeh, and it turned out quite nice. Both friends reported liking it, and with enough detail of how they had cooked the tempeh so that I believed their assessments.

I finally got around to making another batch. I had made one sometime in February and it turned out well, very normal. This time I had meant to split the batch into two bags: one straight-soy and the other a peanut/soy mix. When I went to the drawer to get the sandwich bags, there were none (note to self - check supplies BEFORE starting tempeh recipe), so I decided to combine the two in a larger storage bag. For reasons I don't completely understand, the mold didn't like the peanuts. The soy is all knitted together in fluffy white, but with isolated peanuts encapsulated within the soy/mold matrix. I really like peanut tempeh, so I need to figure this out. Maybe I'm undercooking them?

Trading Myths: Food Inc.

I just pulled a beautiful batch of tempeh out of the incubator - solid and fluffy at the same time, warm with its own growth. I did nothing weird or experimental with it. I watched Food Inc. yesterday in between steps (de-hulling, soaking, cooking, etc.). I was again (I've read the books the documentary is based on) horrified by our food system of enormous corporations and their captured agencies (USDA, FDA). I was frustrated, though, by setting up Salatin and his operation as the ideal, with his methane-belching cattle, and corn- and soy-fed hogs and chickens (that grow slowly, consuming more feed than their factory-farmed and miserable counterparts, thus generating more manure, more emissions, etc.). They're just trading one myth, of progress through engineering (trust the nice men in the white coats) for a Romantic agrarian myth (trust the nice men in the overalls). I'll stick with my tempeh.

Farewell to PB&J

Last night I fried up some more of the super-dense tempeh. Again it wasn't bad but nothing I'd choose to make again, not enough flavor, no lightness to it, maybe like tempeh from a larger planet than ours, appropriate for higher gravity but out of place here.

I'm nearly finished transferring the PB&J Campaign to A Well Fed World. This is truly bittersweet: I am delighted to see that the Campaign will go on, operated by enthusiastic and talented activists. Of course I am also sad to let go of the work of five (six?) years.