Thank you to our lovely customer Lloyd for sending us his recipe:
Much time has passed and much tofu has been consumed since my original effort at tofu making so I thought I'd write an update!
I've been using new tools and new ingredients to make an even better product. It takes a little time but the results are excellent, and good value for money at under £1.50 for 400g of tofu which is cheaper than the supermarket!
The process is much the same:
Make soy milk
Soak 200g soy beans overnight in water. Discard the water and blend the soybeans, first on their own to break them down and then with 1.2l of water (I do this in 3 batches with my blender but you could do it in more or less).
Using a fine mesh sieve, strain the resulting mixture to remove the pulp and then discard it (or save it and use it in recipes if you're feeling adventurous).
Cook and curdle the soy milk
Heat the milk in a large pan (I use my biggest pan because it has a tendency to boil over very easily). You can use quite a high heat but do stir constantly so that it doesn't burn on the base of the pan. Bring it right to the boil - this is essential to cook the milk.
Turn off the heat and then immediately mix 2 tsp of Gypsum salt (food grade not agricultural or construction!) with a little water to make a paste and stir this in.
Leave it for about 20 minutes to half an hour and it should start to thicken and separate.
Form the tofu
Tip the separated soy milk into a nut milk bag, cheesecloth, muslin cloth or similar and strain out the liquid - be careful as it will be hot! Gently squeeze out more and more of the liquid until you have a fairly solid lump of tofu remaining. It will still be quite soggy.
(Note – the curds (ie the lumps that we want) are quite small and so a cloth is necessary otherwise we’ll lose too much of the good stuff!)
At this point it needs to be pressed into a block and more and more liquid extracted. I used the Tofuture press which uses strong elastic bands to apply a consistent force to press the tofu. I simply place my tofu, still in the nut milk bag, into the press and hook the elastic bands over.
At first you'll have loads of liquid pour out but the longer it's in, the firmer and more delicious the tofu becomes! After about 10-15 minutes it's ready to use. You can even halve it and freeze some for another day.
A note on gypsum: previously I used lemon juice, but gypsum is a much more authentic coagulant which produces a tofu similar to that bought in shops. I bought it from ebay for £8 for 500g, which works out at about 24p's worth of gypsum per 400g block of tofu.
The pictures: tofu being pressed and the finished 418g block of tofu (from 200g beans)
