The Lazy Person's Guide to Making Tofu

A very quick and dirty guide to making tofu for the criminally lazy.

1) Shopping

Buy some soya milk. You could make your own but you are lazy, remember? Tesco value UHT stuff does the trick and is about 60p a litter, which will make about 250ish grams

For coagulant you can use all sorts of things, Calcium Carbonate (gypsum) is popular, but epsom salts are just as good and you can get them any chemist for well under £1 for a tub that will do about 20 batches.

You can buy a tofu press which yields a firmer texture, but using a colander with a well fitting plate works just as well. Line the press or colander with muslin/cheese cloth.

2) Empty soya milk into a saucepan and bring almost to the boil.

3) Meanwhile, boil a mug of water.

4) When the soya milk has almost boiled (it doesn't really matter if it boils, just try not to boil it all over the job) turn it off and take it off the heat. Leave for a few mins to slightly cool to avoid scorching of the tofu on the bottom of the pot.

5) take one teaspoon of coagulant per liter of soya milk and stir quickly into the hot water. Stir the soya milk vigorously and pour the coagulant in. You should see fluffy clouds of tofu forming in a clearish golden whey. If not clotting happens heat the mixture up a bit or add a little more hot water with coagulant.

6) Let stand for about 20mins.

7) pour into lined press/colander (over sink or bowl to catch whey) and weight down. Leave a few hours, overnight for firm tofu.

8) Fin

Some folk use the whey in cooking or to soak grains in to make them more digestable. I don't normally bother.

It sounds like a lot of work, bit essentially it's boiling soya milk, adding coagulant, waiting then straining. It takes 5-10 mins of actual attention/work.