Japanese Bean Cheese, or Tofu
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the soybeans
Soak the soybeans in cold water for 24 hours.
Grind the soaked beans between two small millstones to create a thin paste.
Make the soy milk
Add more water to the paste and boil in a large kettle for 1 hour.
Strain the mixture through a bag to remove the hulls into a suitable vessel.
Coagulate and press
Stir in water and add 1 quart of bitter brine for every 2 cups of dry beans.
Allow the protein to precipitate and settle at the bottom.
Apply light pressure with a lid to help form the tofu.
Once cool, decant the water and cut the tofu into slices.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
What each ingredient does
- White soybeans (shiro-mame)
- Provide the protein and body that set into the tofu curd.
- Bitter brine
- Causes the soy proteins to clump and coagulate into curds.
The step that matters
Adding the bitter brine. The brine must be stirred in evenly at the right ratio. Too little leaves the soy milk unset, while too much can make the curd bitter and firm unevenly. Proteins clump when the coagulant contacts them uniformly.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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