Knowledge Base > Dan Marek - Ask Me Anything (Office Half-Hour)
Dan Marek - Ask Me Anything (Office Half-Hour)
This event was on
Tuesday, April 29, 2025 at 11:00 am Pacific, 2:00 pm Eastern
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 cours… Read More.
Question:
When making the protein swap to tofu from any animal protein is the swap a 1:1 ratio?
— Angelia Freeman
Answer:
It's actually not because a one-to-one ratio kind of, it's a little tougher those, so if you're saying like a piece of steak or like a cut of like a, um, again, vegetarian, so like, uh, having a, I don't know, a T-bone or something like that, if you were just put like a slice of steak tofu out, it's definitely not going to be the same thing. Um, and part of that is because, um, the textures are going to be completely different as well too, right? So, um, depending on the animal protein you're trying to replace, you might not want to do tofu in particular if you're doing something like chicken, you know, that might work if you're doing something like that. It, uh, it might, but if you're doing maybe like a shredded chicken, you might wanna look at something like an oyster mushroom where you shred the oyster mushroom or something like jackfruit. Uh, again, shredding that jackfruit kind of geeks that same kind of texture. And you can add the, the flavor pro, uh, profiles to those and those scenarios, if you have shredded mushroom or shredded, um, jackfruit and it's cooked in the same way as you would do the chicken, that can be a one-to-one ratio. But if it's to be like a steak or something like that, maybe not as much. Um, you also want to think about something like seitan, right for a steak, um, which is like made out of a vital wheat gluten, but that's not something, I mean, not normally where people would just eat an entire, you know, steak of uh, uh, wheat gluten at the same time. So, um, you just kind of have to switch that out depending on what you're trying to replace. And, um, definitely, uh, you know, if you have more questions about that, um, specifics would probably help a little bit. So if you're like, I'm looking to re replace this animal protein, what should I do it with? Definitely write back in even on this comment, you can do it or catch us on our nest next, ask me anything. Um, and I will gladly help you to be able to convert, um, an animal protein into a plant-based version as well.
