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I have a marinade for tofu that calls for 3 tablespoons of oil. What can I use in replace of the oil? The recipe also calls for a teaspoon of toasted sesame oil, but I just omit that.

Ask Me Anything (Office Hours)

Dan Marek - Ask Me Anything (Office Hours)

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This event was on October 15, 2024

Join Chef Dan Marek in his virtual office as he welcomes all of your questions. This event was created for you and we encourage you to Ask Anything – from cooking techniques to course-specific questions, to how to turn your cooking passion into profit or simply hearing the perspective of a professional chef, Chef Dan is ready to answer them all.

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Question

Mary Gerstein

I have a marinade for tofu that calls for 3 tablespoons of oil. What can I use in replace of the oil? The recipe also calls for a teaspoon of toasted sesame oil, but I just omit that.

Answer

I just admit that, okay, so it's really hard for me to tell what kind of marinades you're making. Um, but for tofu and it calls for oil, you probably will be able to just emit it and just use the marinade for the tofu instead. Now if it's like just oil and a bunch of seasonings, you're gonna have to figure out another way for that liquid to be able to help the seasoning stick to the tofu. So a little bit of water or something might be able to help with that as well. It could be a vinegar, but that might be too potent for it depending on what your marinade is. So, uh, replacing it with water, so the oil might help you might just not need as much, um, water as the oil for the test. Toasted sesame oil, it's fine if you're emitting it, but you might want to maybe use toasted sesames in the recipe as well, or the marinade to be able to get that flavor out of it. At the same time, you also might wanna try tahini, which is, uh, you know, sesame, uh, just ground up and they do a toasted version of that too.

Dan Marek

Director of Plant-Based Culinary & Dev

*Dan Marek* is a chef educator who has been teaching vegan and vegetarian cooking for over 15 years. At Rouxbe, he is our Director of Plant-Based Culinary and Development where he helps develop content, classes and builds courses for many of our partners. Dan is a board member of Slow Food Austin, the Institute of Child Nutrition, and Conscious Capitalism. He has earned his BA in Journalism from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University and holds certificates in Nutrition from Cornell University. Prior to his role with Rouxbe, Dan worked with Whole Kids Foundation training teachers and food service at schools across the country on nutrition and culinary best practices. He also worked as a Healthy Eating Educator at Whole Foods Market’s flagship store in Austin, TX, was a personal chef for some of Austin’s elite business people, taught classes in culinary techniques at Austin Community College, The Natural Epicurean, and Le Cordon Bleu. Dan also regularly volunteers cooking or speaking about nutrition for the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, Marathon Kids, Health Alliance for Austin Musicians, and the Ronald McDonald House Charities of Austin and Central Texas.