TacoCat (kinda) Cooks! #38: Air Fryer Spicy Tofu?

Hey Steemit!

We're back with more of our home cooking! If you're unfamiliar with this series, it's where I showcase some of the food we've been making at home since we've been cooking a lot nowadays! Both because it's cheaper and also healthier to cook for yourself compared to eating out. While I usually stick to the usual recipes I do like to try new ones once in a while and figured I'd share the new ones I've tried once a month so here we go!

I've been seeing some recipes pop up on my Youtube recommended and found this video from a channel called Aaron and Claire, a Korean couple in the US where he makes these deliciously simple recipes for her to try. They have plenty of simple home cooked meal recipes on their channel and I've actually tried a few of them before and they turned out pretty good!

But this recipe in particular involves using an air fryer which we use very frequently so I thought it'd be interesting to try to make different foods using it. In the video he has 5 different recipes but I thought of trying the Crispy Baked Tofu since we love tofu.

So for this recipe, we mainly need 2 ingredients - tofu and spring onion. Most of the other ingredients will be used for the sauce.

Ingredients:

• 1 box tofu (500g)
• 3 stalks of spring onion

Sauce:
1 tbsp Gochujang (Korean spicy paste)
1 tbsp Corn syrup
0.5 tbsp Soy sauce
0.5 tbsp Oyster sauce
0.5 tbsp Garlic
1 tbsp Cooking oil

I didn't have corn syrup so I just omitted that and I think it still tasted okay so I don't think it's a necessary ingredient. This was also going to be my first time trying and cooking with Gochujang so I was excited!

Step 1: Following the video, we have to first dry the tofu as much as possible. He used paper towels to drain them and a hair dryer to dry it. Tofu contains a lot of water so you want to drain as much as possible to get it crispy.

In my first attempt I had a hard time getting the water out, so I recommend taking a weight like an empty pan and resting it on top of the tofu for half an hour and let gravity drain the tofu. Because when I was dabbing the tofu with paper towels it used up quite a few sheets and I ended up breaking the tofu a little bit because I was too forceful. Keep in mind tofu is also very fragile and to be gentle.

Step 2: Chop the spring onion, separating the white and green parts.

Step 3: If you don't have ready minced garlic at home, chop some fresh garlic.

Step 4: Time to make the sauce! Add the garlic, soy sauce, oyster sauce, corn syrup (if you have it), cooking oil and gochujang in a small bowl.

Mix it all together until you get a nice even sauce.

Step 5: Lay the tofu on aluminium foil or parchment paper and make some cuts over the top but not all the way down. As you can see my tofu broke pretty bad but I tried my best to salvage it.

Step 6: Season the tofu with salt and black pepper.

Step 7: Brush the top of the tofu with the sauce. Depending on how big your tofu is you might have extra sauce but better to have more than less.

Step 8: Put it in the air fryer for 15 minutes at 200°C or 390°F.

Step 9: Once it's done, take it out of the air fryer and drizzle some sesame oil and the garnish with spring onions.

And that's it! So my tofu was definitely still too wet because the water leaked and mixed with the sauce while cooking and it came out pretty wet in the air fryer still. So definitely try to get as much water out as possible before frying. I tried the press method on my second attempt and it was a lot better! It wasn't very crispy but at least it wasn't that wet.

Anyway, we had this with out typical fried rice since I had some leftover rice from the previous day and it was still really tasty! The sauce wasn't super spicy but did have a nice kick to it, and although the tofu wasn't crispy it was still delicious paired with the gochujang sauce.

Overall, I'd say this is an interesting new method of cooking tofu and still very yummy! It may be my tofu is different from the one he uses in the video which is why it didn't turn out as crispy but we still enjoyed it nonetheless. If you like tofu or want to include more protein in your diet and are a fan of spicy stuff, I'd say this recipe is worth trying out!

Thanks for reading!

To find out more about me, check out my intro post here!

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Check out my previous post in this series!
TacoCat (kinda) Cooks! #37: Perfect peppery Steak and Roasted Veggies! 😋