Homemade tofu press

By : gastronomictravels | 0 Comments | On : June 28, 2012 | Category : Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Vegetarian, Vietnamese

Necessity is the mother of invention and never is it more true than in our case! I had been looking for a tofu press for some time now. I’ve looked at the tofuXpress but it doesn’t seem too sturdy and I was afraid of the warping factor. I want my tofu to come out evenly on all sides and in the picture on their website, you could see that the tofu is thinner on one side in the comparison test. Plus, this container is only for the standard sized tofu block. What if I need to make a large batch of tofu?

Now I know what you’re going to say. What’s wrong with the stacking method? Nothing! The thing is, I love tofu and I want a dedicated device for removing the water content from the tofu. That’s all!

I’ve also looked at the tofu press on Amazon but unfortunately, they don’t deliver to Europe. This seems to be what I need but again, the press seems to be made of 2 small plastic cutting boards and the warping factor would be even more here than in the above mentioned press.

Since we’re not at all handy but hubby is a handiman-wanna-be so we do have the necessary equipment at home. We went to the hardware store and bought a piece of wood shelf that we sawed down into 2 pieces, a few nuts and bolts and away we went.

I’ve tested our homemade press twice now and I must say that I’m very happy with it. The board is large enough so that one could press a larger block of tofu than the standard size. It is also sturdy enough so that warping would never be a problem! The key to pressing tofu is still PATIENCE, however.

This is the original thickness of a standard tofu block. I used plastic wrap in between the boards for hygiene purposes.

Here the tofu is less than half its original thickness.

I was able to press out 200mL of liquid.

Once I took the pressed tofu out of the presser, it doubled its thickness.

I was very eager to get going and started screwing the top board down way too much on the first go so that the tofu did crack in several places. Lesson learned and the second try was perfect tofu, about less than 1 cm in thickness and the water loss was about 200mL. Not too bad!

I cut the tofu in 3mm slices and marinated them for 1 hour before grilling them in the oven. Turned out perfect and the texture was so AMAZING! Like eating meat! The recipe will be posted tomorrow so stay tuned!

If you’ve made a tofu press yourself or have seen other presses out there, please let me know and don’t forget to include pics!

If you’d like to learn to make your own tofu, see our post on tofu-making.