— Mitch Miglis

I use tofu in so many different ways and one of the probably most popular ones for like my family is just doing a marinade on it and a doing, uh, a roast on it, right? So we'll just basically marinade it and it's typically like what I do is just kind of a standard recipes. I'll use a DA dark soy sauce, a tamari, um, and I'll put in just like a drop of liquid smoke. Um, I might put in a little vegan fish sauce. If you don't have vegan fish sauce, you can use a vegan witch shire sauce, just a touch of it. And then I'll slice my tofu into kind of strips, put it into that marinade, add a little bit of water 'cause it typically won't cover it the whole way. And I also don't want it to be unbelievably salty. So, uh, it's usually like my marinade is probably a quarter of all those other ingredients and the rest is water. So that way it's not really, really salty 'cause dark soy sauce can get there. Um, and then I will basically soak that and then put it in the oven, uh, you know, take it outta the marinade, put it in the oven on a sheet pan at three 50 for about 20 minutes. And that is one of the recipes that my family goes to constantly. Now I will riff off of that recipe all the time, like I do a Greek dish that's kind of like a very lemon forward. Um, you know, so, uh, it's basically the, kinda the same thing, but the marinade doesn't have as much soy. It'll have just a little bit of tamari, a lot of lemon juice, and I'll put oregano in it, um, as well and do the same baking on that. It's really light and airy. It's good for roasted vegetables too, where you do do it as a side, uh, that same marinade if you actually just take a lighter tofu, like a, a softer tofu and you do a lot of lemon juice and oregano. And I usually do a little bit of olive oil into it as well. Nutritional yeast, a little bit of salt. Um, that's a great feta recipe, so a vegan feta. So if you're just cubing it, it's great to be able to put on top of salads as well. I don't usually cook that one off. Um, which you could of course. Uh, but um, yeah, that's a pretty popular one as well. Um, but just doing the baked so is probably the most popular with our family. My kids will just eat that, you know, on like, on bread with a little bit of mayo and pickle just as a sandwich and is one of their favorite lunches, quite honestly. Uh, I'd like it if they ate less mayo on it, but you know, like at least they're getting their protein and their fat I guess. Um, but uh, what are some of the other ways the taco salads, uh, or tacos or tofu scrambles, sorry, my words are getting mixed up here. The tofu scrambles, um, are a, uh, pretty big staple in our house as well too. And that's just basically doing, um, a scramble to taste like, uh, like scrambled eggs. Um, and you know, I'll usually use a little bit of black salt, um, some nutritional yeast, uh, some turmeric, and I usually saute some onions, mushrooms, peppers before that as well too. And then put the tofu in to be able to get it into that and crumble the tofu in to be able to get that same texture and serve it on tacos, uh, or on a taco shell with, uh, some either salsa or hot sauce. Um, and it's a pretty, uh, you know, again, a big staple on our house. Um, kind of a go-to to be able to use tofu as well. Um, now there are a slew of other ways that I'd be able to use tofu too. Um, but, you know, depending on the dish and what you're doing, I might slice it really thin and just do, you know, cook it in a pan and put it into like a che or something, like a Korean noodle dish or something like that with a lot of this thinly sliced vegetables. Um, and do a nice sauce on that as well. Um, and there's just so many different ways to be able to include it. And again, Sophie's one of our family favorites, um, that the, the kids love it, it's approachable to them. They know how to cook it themselves too, which is great. Um, so yeah, it's definitely a great medium for flavor because it starts basically with no flavor, so you can add a lot of things to it to incorporate it and make it in other things. Um, my wife often will use it in like a, like a crumble to do like a bolognese and like a pasta dish or something like that. We use it in, uh, lasagna, we do it on our pizza nights. I'll do a tofu ricotta. Um, we'll do a kind of a soft, uh, tofu and do like a lemon, uh, nutritional yeast salt kind of mixture, uh, and kind of hand mush it all together and then kinda drizzle it over the top of your pizza and do a ricotta. So, uh, you know, a little bit of basil and tomato with that quite good. So it works out really well. Um, so yeah, there's a slew of different ways to be able to use it, but those are probably some of my favorites, uh, personally use in our own house.