If you are trying to eat less meat, or if you are on a diet and trying to cut calories, or if you are looking for an inexpensive form of protein, or if you are into Asian cooking and looking for new ingredients, you may have considered tofu. I came across lots of references to tofu in researching vegetarian/vegan options for the Dukan diet.

But have you ever considered making tofu yourself? You might start by taking a look at How Soy Milk Works, since tofu starts with soy milk.

Tofu and cheese are nearly identical. To make cheese, you start with cow milk, coagulate it and press the curds. To make Tofu, you start with soy milk, coagulate it and press the curds. To coagulate soy milk you use calcium sulfate, and the whole process of making tofu is pretty simple:
1) You boil the soy milk add calcium sulfate.
2) Once the soy milk coagulates, you strain out the curds and wrap them in a cloth.
3) Then you press the curds with three to five pounds of weight for 20 minutes. You normally press the curds in a small wooden or metal box that gives the tofu is traditional blocky shape.

These two videos show you the steps:

Also helpful – how to make tofu taste like meat:

If you were to start with soaked soy beans, make the soy milk and then make tofu, the whole process would take less than 2 hours.

There are several advantages to tofu when you compare it to cheese or meat. The biggest difference is fat and calories. Four ounces of cheddar cheese contains 40 grams of fat (most of it saturated animal fat) and 480 calories. Four ounces of firm tofu contains 5 grams of fat and only 80 calories. The cheese holds 24 grams of protein, while the tofu has 10 grams. The cheese contains 720 mg of salt, while the tofu has only 60 mg. The other thing that tofu contains is isoflavones, which are thought to have a number of health benefits. In addition, the soy in tofu has shown some ability to lower “bad” cholesterol.

When made from scratch, tofu is very inexpensive – about $1 a pound. As a source of high-quality, low-fat protein, that price is hard to beat.

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