Tofu: A Love-Hate Guide

How to Ruin Every Recipe with Tofu…

Look, I get it. You’re trying to eat healthier. Maybe you’ve watched one too many documentaries about factory farming, or perhaps your doctor politely suggested you should stop eating things that actively try to clog your arteries. Whatever the case, you’ve arrived at tofu, that spongy, protein-packed enigma that has been simultaneously praised as a miracle food and cursed as a tasteless block of despair.

Well, I’m here to help you incorporate tofu into your cooking in a way that guarantees maximum culinary disappointment. Why? Because tofu, my dear friends, is an agent of chaos. It can be anything, do anything, and yet, if handled incorrectly, it will single-handedly destroy the integrity of any dish. And I think that’s beautiful.

Step One: Do Absolutely Nothing to It

One of the best ways to ensure tofu ruins a dish is to do absolutely nothing to it. Just take it straight out of the package, cut it into lifeless cubes, and toss it onto your plate like you’re feeding an ungrateful toddler. Sure, you could press the tofu to remove excess water, marinate it for flavor, or at least throw it in a pan with some oil. But why do that when you can enjoy the unadulterated experience of biting into a piece of wet bean sponge?

Step Two: Assume It Tastes Like Chicken (It Does Not)

Ah, the classic mistake. Somewhere along the line, someone spread the bold-faced lie that tofu “takes on the flavor of whatever you cook it with.” This is false. Tofu absorbs flavor about as well as a brick absorbs empathy. Sure, you can drown it in soy sauce, sriracha, and three pounds of garlic, but underneath it all, that unmistakable blandness still lingers, like an awkward silence at a family reunion. If you try to swap tofu for chicken in a dish without making major adjustments, you’ll find yourself wondering why your “fried chicken” tastes like regret.

Step Three: Overcompensate with Seasonings (and Regret It)

Since tofu is basically the edible equivalent of a blank Word document, many cooks, in a desperate act of compensation, assault it with an unholy amount of seasoning. Paprika, cumin, turmeric, chili powder, liquid smoke, maple syrup, peanut butter—it all goes in because something has to make this nightmare edible. What you end up with is not a nuanced, flavorful dish, but a Frankenstein’s monster of clashing flavors, all fighting for dominance while the tofu itself remains unaffected, like an emotionless Zen monk amid a bar brawl.

Step Four: Expect It to Crisp Up Like Magic

Many tofu optimists believe that with the right amount of heat and hope, tofu will transform into a crispy, golden delight. These people are fools. If you don’t press the tofu properly, coat it in starch, or use a method approved by the ancient gods of texture, your tofu will not crisp. Instead, it will sit in the pan, stubbornly steaming itself into oblivion, mocking your dreams of crunchiness. You will keep frying it longer, convinced that any minute now it will turn golden brown, but it won’t. It will simply transition from soft to burnt without ever passing through crisp. It’s science.

Step Five: Serve It to Someone Who Hates Tofu

If you really want to appreciate the full power of tofu as a culinary wrecking ball, serve it to someone who has never liked it in the first place. No matter what you do—no matter how much love, technique, and culinary finesse you apply—this person will take one bite, grimace, and say, “Yeah, I just don’t like tofu.” You could have spent three hours crafting the perfect miso-glazed tofu, crisped to perfection, bursting with umami goodness, and they will still look at you like you just handed them a raw chunk of drywall.

Step Six: Pretend It’s a Good Substitute for Everything

Tofu has a lot of great uses. It can be scrambled, blended into sauces, and even turned into desserts. But that does not mean it is a one-to-one replacement for every food known to humankind. “Tofu bacon” is a cruel joke. “Tofu steak” is an oxymoron. And don’t even get me started on “tofu cheesecake.” Some things just weren’t meant to be, and tofu impersonating all of your favorite comfort foods is one of them. If you want tofu to truly shine, let it be what it is: a slightly gelatinous, nutritionally generous, deeply misunderstood chunk of bean curd.

The Final Step: Give In and Learn to Love It

Eventually, after enough trial and error, enough botched recipes and flavorless disappointments, something shifts. Maybe it’s the Stockholm Syndrome kicking in. Maybe it’s the realization that tofu, when prepared with proper technique and care, is actually pretty good. You’ll find yourself enjoying crispy tofu bites, delighting in a silken tofu soup, or even voluntarily eating a tofu-based dessert without feeling personally attacked. One day, you may even become the person who defends tofu at dinner parties, passionately explaining the virtues of different textures and preparations like some kind of soy-based evangelist.

And that, my friends, is how tofu wins. It bides its time, lurking in the aisles of grocery stores, waiting for the right moment to invade your kitchen and take over your diet. You resist at first, but eventually, inevitably, you give in.

Tofu doesn’t just infiltrate your meals—it infiltrates your soul. And by the time you realize it, it’s already too late.

Disclaimer: This is meant to be a humorous satire of Tofu. I use Tofu all the time. I find it funny, perhaps even shocking, how quickly people dismiss Tofu. So I wrote this article.