[HN Gopher] America doesn't know tofu
___________________________________________________________________
America doesn't know tofu
Author : jseliger
Score : 83 points
Date : 2023-12-29 01:50 UTC (21 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (asteriskmag.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (asteriskmag.com)
| PoignardAzur wrote:
| If anyone else's wondering whether the author followed up on
| importing tofu in the US, here's what his webpage says:
|
| > _It's nice to meet you. I'm working on promoting Chinese tofus
| in the States. If you're not familiar, China has over 20 types of
| tofus. They taste nothing like conventional white blocks. Some
| are bready. Others taste like aged cheese. Some bake up like
| pastry crust. Others melt._
|
| > _I'm writing a book to teach western cooks how use these
| ingredients beyond Chinese cooking. I'm also building a team to
| import and sell these ingredients to western supermarkets. If
| you're excited about this project, let me know here. I'd love to
| find ways to collab._
|
| http://georgestiffman.com/
| ben_w wrote:
| There's tofu that melts? Huh.
|
| That (I thought) it didn't melt was the one thing holding it
| back from being a true vegan cheese[0] alternative to me.
|
| [0] Process for making {cheese, tofu}: take {milk, soy milk},
| add some acid to make the proteins coagulate, then draw the
| rest of the owl to get your sliceable high-protein block of
| controllable firmness and flavour.
| autarch wrote:
| There are vegan cheese products that melt. I like Violife
| brand cheeses when I want something melty.
| ben_w wrote:
| I'm aware of Violife; the trouble is, while it melts, it
| has zero protein -- from the ingredients it's basically
| solidified flavoured coconut oil:
|
| https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/302277589
|
| To me, a true vegan cheese alternative has to tick all the
| boxes that cheese ticks at the same time, not a separate
| product for each box you want to tick.
| Sirizarry wrote:
| Im sorry but you seriously worry about the protein
| content of your cheese? There are plenty other protein
| rich foods
| harimau777 wrote:
| If it has calories, then someone who cares about
| bodybuilding or athletic performance is going to care
| about its macronutrients.
| brnt wrote:
| Vegans need to worry about this, because most don't want
| to eat piles of beans with every meal. I love beans, but
| I love other foods too!
| PretzelPirate wrote:
| Vegans don't need to worry about the protein content of
| vegan cheese. Protein is widely available in vegan food
| and you don't need to eat a pile of beans to get it.
| ben_w wrote:
| Some people won't accept Pepsi if they ask for a cola.
|
| I'm only going to accept vegan cheese as a full
| substitute for real cheese when it ticks enough boxes,
| and one of those boxes is the nutritional values (the
| others include flavour and how it behaves when cooked,
| including melting vs. browning).
|
| That's why I specifically noted that I'm interested by
| the prospect of melty tofu, as tofu is the closest
| substitute I have right now on the nutritional value.
| brnt wrote:
| What vegans foods are they widely available? And at what
| price levels?
| ben_w wrote:
| Sure, for example, and as the link itself is about, tofu.
|
| So what I do in practice when I want a vegan sandwich is
| a thin-ish slice of smoked tofu[0] _instead of vegan
| cheese_ , before adding lettuce or cucumber or whatever.
|
| When I want a vegan pizza, however, this particular tofu
| isn't very melty. It tastes great even cold, like cheese,
| but no melt.
|
| Most days I'm only eating vegetarian, not vegan, but if I
| can get a good melty tofu that fits in a similar gap for
| both diet and flavour even as a simple topping (let alone
| as a more complex part of the recipe as in, say, quiche)
| then that makes it easier to eat vegan on more days.
|
| [0] https://shop.rewe.de/p/rewe-bio-vegan-raeucher-
| tofu-2x175g/8...
| shafyy wrote:
| Violife is my least favorite brand haha. In Germany, I
| prefer Simply V (both for melted and not melted) and
| Edeka's vegan feta cheese, which is absolutely bonkers good
| (always need to double check if it really is vegan).
| OJFord wrote:
| > [0] Process for making {cheese, tofu}: take {milk, soy
| milk}, add some acid to make the proteins coagulate,
|
| I wonder if anyone's tried adding lactose to soy milk and
| using cultures and rest of the process as if to target a
| particular traditional cheese.
|
| I'm not saying the result would be vegan, I don't know if
| there's a vegan source or way of manufacturing lactose, but
| just for interest.
| shafyy wrote:
| I have had a plant-based cheese company for a while. Yes,
| adding casein (I think you mean casein, not lactose) to soy
| milk woulnd't be vegan. There are companies that try to
| create vegan casein with precision fermentation, but to my
| knowledge, none of them are doing it at scale (i.e. I
| wouldn't know where to buy such a vegan cheese).
|
| Most cheese is not made with acid but with enzyme called
| rennet, which is typically found in stomachs of cow's for
| example. Now, there is synthetic rennet which is used in
| the cheese industry widely, which is vegan. However, rennet
| doens't work with plant-based milks. We've done a lot of
| experiments to find a replacement enzyme for rennet that
| would coagulate soy milk with a similar result as animal-
| based cheese, but didn't get any great results.
|
| The cheeses made with acid are usually softer (e.g.
| ricotta). For a while we manufactured and sold a plant-
| based cheese made with soy milk that was very similar to
| ricotta. Not bad, but a far cry from the animal-based
| version.
|
| I still think it's possible to find a way to make plant-
| based cheese without needing to synthetically create vegan
| casein. As other commenters have mentioned, many of the
| vegan cheeses currently available are based on either
| coconut oil, cashew, or almonds (or a mix of these). For
| some use cases, this works suprisingly well (e.g. if you
| live in Germany, get the vegan Feta from Edeka's own brand.
| It's the fucking best). But then again for some use cases,
| they don't (e.g. the melting behavior is usually not very
| good). I think they've gotten a lot better in the past 5
| years and I don't miss animal-based cheese anymore as a
| vegan. I also think there's a local maximum here with these
| coconut oil, almond and cashew based cheeses though.
|
| Edit: Confused lactose with casein, updated to reflect that
| qwertthrowway wrote:
| What about microbial enzyme based cheeses? For example
| I've seen havarti labeled with microbial rennet.
| shafyy wrote:
| Rennet (synthetic or not) doesn't work with plant-based
| milk. It reacts with casein, which is not there in plant-
| based milks.
| NooneAtAll3 wrote:
| > They taste nothing like conventional white blocks
|
| tofu isn't green?? welp, my life is a lie
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| Pumpkin seed tofu is green
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| > I'm also building a team to import and sell these ingredients
| to western supermarkets
|
| Why? American farmers are great at growing soybeans. They even
| grow varieties that are exported to Asia specifically for
| making tofu.
|
| There's an old story about when Honda first set up factories in
| Ohio, they still shipped the engines from Japan. After a while
| they got tired of returning the containers back empty, and went
| in search of something they could fill them with. In the end,
| they hired local farmers to grow specific soybeans that were
| desired in Japan - every engine crate from then on returned to
| Japan with those beans inside.
| yorwba wrote:
| Someone still needs to turn those American soybeans into
| tofu. Either you import the tofu or you import the tofu
| maker.
|
| Just as with those Honda engines, it's easier to start by
| rerouting some of the output of an existing factory than
| having to stand up a whole new factory from scratch.
|
| It might very well turn out that for most of these regional
| specialty tofus, there's not enough demand in America to make
| local production economically viable, but there could still
| be a niche for a specialized tofu importer that can provide
| small quantities of many different varieties.
| lgxz wrote:
| Well, I can't believe that he spent 10000 Yuan to learn how to
| make Tofu.
| pprotas wrote:
| Fascinating article brimming with the author's passion for the
| humble tofu. It left me with a desire to book a ticket to China
| and try out all the vegetarian foods described in the article!
| Especially those tofu dumplings of love.
|
| I have a great love for tofu as well, ever since I dropped meat a
| few years ago. I am glad to see that there are people like George
| Stiffman that seem to evangelize non-meat dishes and ingredients
| like tofu.
| chris-orgmenta wrote:
| I found this vivid, precise writing to be extremely enjoyable to
| sink into.
| PoignardAzur wrote:
| Asterisk magazine has much more vivid, down-to-earth writing
| than "bay area rationalist magazine funded by effective
| altruism" would evoke.
|
| One of the articles in that same issue was the one that pushed
| me to finally become vegetarian.
| Snow_Falls wrote:
| I'm not sure I can trust a magazine that has a grammatical
| error in title of an article on the front page.* Now this
| doesn't say anything about the quality of the article itself
| (who doesn't make silly mistakes) but it does speak to a lack
| of editorial oversight. These sorts of basic mistakes do not
| inspire confidence.
|
| *bottom article on the front page: "Rarely is the Question
| Asked: Is Our Children Learning?" should be "are our children
| learning".
|
| ps what is the article that convinced you to go vegatarian,
| sounds interesting
| em-bee wrote:
| given the content of that title it sounds like an
| intentional pun
| aragonite wrote:
| It's a reference to this :)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushism#Education
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ej7ZEnjSeA
| gwern wrote:
| This is a good example of the difficulties with signaling
| and communication: anything which looks like an error is
| a 'thing you can't countersignal' (https://www.lesswrong.
| com/posts/ThhNvdBxcTYdzm69s/things-you...).
|
| Snow_Falls is _so_ contemptuous of Asterisk that he sees
| a blatant 'error' which 'somehow' evaded the writers and
| editors all this time, and assumes that this means they
| are _that_ incompetent; he doesn 't consider the modus
| tollens, that the error is deliberate and he is the one
| failing to understand what is a well-known GWB allusion.
| If he had a higher opinion of Asterisk, he might have
| instead checked (if he took even a second to google the
| title "Rarely is the Question Asked: Is Our Children
| Learning?", the first 5 hits all explain the allusion),
| or at least withheld judgment - but he didn't, so he just
| snarks here and gets to be embarrassed when someone
| politely explains the joke to him.
|
| This happens all the time in places with 'context
| collapse', _especially_ on Twitter - I don 't know how
| many times I've seen someone retweet something 'stupid'
| or 'obviously wrong', where actually the original tweet
| was a pretty amusing reference that the retweeter didn't
| get. (For example, if someone tweets something along the
| lines of 'They spent $X, for that much money, they could
| have given every American $Y million dollars!', others
| might get angry about the arithmetic being wildly wrong
| by multiple orders of magnitude, thereby demonstrating
| utter innumeracy... Because the original tweeter is
| making fun of a famous instance of innumeracy.) It is a
| particularly infuriating kind of criticism because it
| often is done in bad faith, due to contempt and laziness
| and assuming the worst possible interpretation of
| something one has written with great effort, and it is
| especially irritating to be condescended to by someone
| who is _so_ ignorant compared to you that they don 't
| even realize their ignorance.
|
| It's a pity because it makes it hard to write publicly in
| any way but the most boring way for the lowest common
| denominator, given that inevitably someone is going to
| come along and take your Socratic ignorance for genuine
| ignorance, or your playful misspelling as proof you can't
| even run a spellchecker, etc, and you can hardly explain
| every joke without vitiating them.
| Snow_Falls wrote:
| I'm hardly contemptuous. If I had a higher opinion of
| asterisk, I would still assume it's an error as that's
| exactly what it looks like. Also, do you google the title
| of every article you read? Why would you say this as if
| that's something you expect me to do. I'm not american,
| Hacker News is full of us, why would you assume that a
| specific sentence with a grammatical error is "well
| known".
|
| You don't outright call me acting in bad faith, but you
| sure imply it. I am not embarrased at all, though I am
| grateful for the other commenter explaining the very
| nation-specific joke.
|
| edit: I checked the video, it's thirteen years old! I
| wouldn't even expect an american to remember that.
| Glench wrote:
| > One of the articles in that same issue was the one that
| pushed me to finally become vegetarian.
|
| Which article was it?
| m0llusk wrote:
| There are some great Tofu suppliers in America, but also a labor
| saving device that allows people to easily experiment with
| variations themselves: https://www.soymilkmaker.com/
|
| One of the problems is that, like so many things in America, tofu
| has taken on some silly political baggage. Among a significant
| share of the population, both conservative and health oriented,
| there is a common belief that soy is full of extrogen that will,
| if ingested, reduce masculine characteristics and emphasize
| feminine characteristics. The reality is that the phytoestrogens
| in soy do not have a significant effect on humans and we have an
| extremely large amount of data including the massive "China
| Study" that shows that. But the idea has taken hold and now many
| people are afraid to eat tofu because it will turn them into weak
| and unhealthy girls.
| Snow_Falls wrote:
| Don't forget the anti-asian racism implicit to the belief that
| soy, a food eaten widely in asia, makes you weak and feminine
| (whatever that means). The backlash to soy is inextricably tied
| to old stereotypes of asians as weak and docile.
| lupusreal wrote:
| Soy has long been grown in America but it isn't a traditional
| part of western diets and was generally considered animal
| feed (more so in the past than now). This isn't because
| Asians did eat it, but because westerners didn't in the first
| place.
| philwelch wrote:
| No, it isn't. The stereotypical "soy boy" is a white vegan
| polyamorous hipster from a West Coast city, and most of the
| backlash to soy is targeted at processed foods than Asian
| cuisine. It's more adjacent to the sort of right-wing hippie
| natural food scene that likes to slonk raw eggs than to any
| sort of anti-Asian racism.
| Decabytes wrote:
| There are plenty of people in America of Asian descent that know
| lots about Tofu. There are also plenty of articles about secret
| off menu items at Chinese restaurants, and I wouldn't be
| surprised if you could get some of this Tofu there.
|
| This stuff just takes time. I remember reading a news article
| where someone talked about drinking bubble tea in NYC before it
| was popular as a kid, as a treat. Now you can get bubble tea
| everywhere
| hardwaregeek wrote:
| If you like passionate writing about chinese food, I highly
| recommend Fuchsia Dunlop's new book, Invitation to A Banquet,
| which goes over chinese food in remarkable detail. Each chapter
| is devoted to a single dish or technique and it really goes in
| depth.
| wouldbecouldbe wrote:
| The best meat replacer really isn't tofu, it's Seitan.
|
| It has the umami quality certain meats & cheeses have, you just
| need to have another bite, that I've not have had with other meat
| replacements.
|
| I've eaten the most delicious vegetarian chicken made of Seitan
| over a decade ago in a monastery in Xiamen.
|
| Still not sure why it hasn't made it's way to the West. Maybe
| because of the fact its basically pure gluten.
| ReactiveJelly wrote:
| I agree, seitan is a lot more like meat. I prefer less-
| realistic replacements so even though I've enjoyed seitan I
| actually quit buying it. It's too convincing.
| upon_drumhead wrote:
| I can buy it in my local grocery stores and numerous
| restaurants serve it. I feel like it has gotten to the west,
| but just isn't too popular.
| wouldbecouldbe wrote:
| Yeah you can buy it, but soya is by far the most popular base
| for commercial replacement. In China you can buy all sorts of
| meat replica's based on seitan that are much tastier then
| current meat replacements way before beyond burger.
| Glench wrote:
| My friend perfected seitan nuggets: https://bartlebysfood.com/
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| Seitan is so good and easy to make at home
| neuronic wrote:
| It has? At least in Germany I can easily find Seitan in stores
| in bigger cities and order copious amounts of organic Seitan
| online from German vendors.
|
| No marketing, but an example: https://www.korodrogerie.de/bio-
| seitan-400-g
| wouldbecouldbe wrote:
| yeah you're right, you can get it, but it's not actively used
| as the main ingredient for meat substitution both in recipes
| and commercial products. In China it was one of the main
| ingredients already for decades I think, if not longer. Here
| it became soya for some reason
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| A lot of Vegan meat substitutes are based on Gluten. Like
| Seitan.
|
| So if you are gluten free and vegan, it's tough.
|
| And you have to be careful because you can't just grab some
| vegan product and think it is safe. Thus tofu is my go-to for
| protein.
| ecshafer wrote:
| This is a nice article, but it does have some parts that seem off
| base. First you can walk into any chinese grocery store (in
| america) and get 20 kinds of tofu, thats really not an issue, and
| chinese restaurants (in chinatown) will sell many kinds of tofu.
|
| The other is that the author makes the mistake of over
| emphasizing the vegetarianism aspect (which i think some comments
| here also are). Many chinese dishes with tofu flavor them with
| meat. Outside of a temple, the vegetarian aspect isnt really
| important, tofu is just another dish. Tofus attachment with being
| a meat replacement or a vegetarian food is the major reason its
| not eaten more by americans.
| liveoneggs wrote:
| Agreed. Tofu is just another food. Being only for vegetarians
| is just bad marketing. :)
|
| I have some stuff in boxes that live in the panty next to the
| rest of my beans and just use it whenever.
| flakiness wrote:
| +1
|
| As a Japanese, I was surprised that Tofu is almost always
| treated as a meat alternative in the US, even in many Chinese
| restaurants. Where is Mapo-tofu :face-with-rolling-eyes:
|
| But I would consider the tofu-as-meat-alternative "marking" a
| success, given the massive adoption compared to other Asian
| ingredients which are pushed to the small Asian corner of the
| grocery stores.
| syntaxing wrote:
| Yup, even Buddhist do not eat Tofu as "meat". They're usually a
| form soy product but not exclusively tofu.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Since meat is expensive, maybe it is more about 'stretching' a
| dish. If you can only afford one cut of meat, but need to feed
| four, the tofu is used to get more protein in cheaply.
|
| That has always been my impression.
| downut wrote:
| Right. I've been eating tofu in the US all my adult life, since
| about 1983 or so. Everywhere I've lived (FL, GA, NC, AZ, CA)
| it's been available in standard grocery stores, generally with
| several varieties. Asian markets, as you note, have many
| varieties.
|
| I have a number of vegetarian tofu recipes I like but... my
| favorite Ma Po tofu recipes (there are innumerable versions)
| have meat in them.
|
| I really dislike how common, ancient foodstuffs get tilted into
| ideological pigeonholes. There's a galaxy of vegetarian Chinese
| dishes, of which tofu is just one component. I've started to
| learn about Asian pickles and oh dear how deep it goes. Just
| fantastic, and delicious!
|
| Anyway it never occurred to me that people shy away from tofu
| because it's vegetarian; people cook with eg beans and
| vegetables, right? I always thought it was because hardly
| anyone cooks traditional Chinese dishes at home. I didn't do it
| much myself until I discovered Fuschia Dunlop.
| ecshafer wrote:
| My wife (who is from china) has been doing a lot of pickling
| in the chinese tradition. Theres a lot of pickled chinese
| dishes with very interesting taste profiles, especially some
| of the peppers. In the us we mostly dint pickle much, outside
| of cucumbers and cabbage, with some things like pickled
| sausage or eggs having a certain low class / poor canotation.
| But china pickles a huge variety of foods.
| MilStdJunkie wrote:
| Yeah, saying you're making tofu for dinner is interpreted
| ideologically in the rural US. Along with your choice of beer
| and snack chips. I'm not surprised that ideology (and anger!)
| has been commoditized in the states; after all, if there's a
| single founding principle in our nation, it's staying out of my
| way unless your way involves me making a buck. But it's more
| than a little depressing how easily people get schnookered.
|
| Anyway, dinner is meat, and dessert is this: take one part 65%
| chocolate chips, melt in microwave[1], add to equal weight silk
| tofu in bowl of 12 c food processor, whir until combined, spoon
| into oreo cookie crust, refrigerate 6 hours or overnight. You
| might never make mousse again. I mean, mousse is better, but
| it's also 20x fussier. Want some deeper flavor? Add 1 tsp
| coffee powder, 1 tsp vanilla to the choc/tofu before whir, or
| lighten[2] with a few tbsp heavy cream.
|
| I've got friends who can't boil water, and I taught 'em this
| recipe, and to this day it's their best dessert they know how
| to make. I'm a little proud of the simple recipes like that.
|
| [1] Do you know how to melt chocolate in the nuker without
| scorching it? Look that up first.
|
| [2] Yes, lighten! The cream catches more air, lifts up the
| "tofousse" a bit. If you like it even more puffy, add a tub of
| dairy whip topping, but this makes for a floppy pie when sliced
| unless you add gelatin.
| yftsui wrote:
| He is not wrong, the picture in the article has 11 kinds of
| tofu, if I visit all 3 Chinese grocery stores in the Seattle
| area (Asian Food Center in Seattle, Ranch 99 in Shoreline, Jing
| Jing in Factoria), I could probably get 6 or 7 in total out of
| 11. T&T Supermarket in BC has a slightly better inventory, but
| I doubt they will have all 11 in stock. If you are not on the
| east/west coast, the selection will be even smaller and worse
| in quality.
|
| The "20 kinds of tofu" you can get in any Chinese grocery
| stores are often slightly changed variants (i.e. silk, soft,
| firm, hard tofu are pretty similar), and usually poor in
| quality.
|
| He did not exaggerate the vegetarianism aspect as well, if you
| visit Temples in China, affiliated / non-affiliated restaurants
| nearby boasts "vegetarian feast" aka "Quan Su Zhai " , some
| even name it a culture as "Su Zhai Wen Hua ". They make Tofu
| taste like meat and looks like meat, it is definitely a big
| thing and you could search for photos on how close these food
| look like real meat/fish and the popularity.
| rafram wrote:
| "Quan Su Zhai "/"vegetarian feast" restaurants definitely
| exist in the US. Buddha Bodai in Manhattan's Chinatown is
| excellent, even for meat eaters.
| nothercastle wrote:
| Most Americans including myself have no idea how to cook tofu
| well. If you want to market tofu you need to demo it in grocery
| stores, show off recipes at farmers markets or host tofu fairs.
| Somehow you need to show what's possible with tofu and probably
| adjust it to American (bland) favor pallet
| fader wrote:
| Definitely. It's not _hard_ to cook tofu well, but it's really
| easy to cook it badly.
|
| One trick I've learned is when frying tofu, let it sit until
| you're pretty sure it's burned. Then wait at least that long
| again before flipping it and starting the process over. (It's
| really, really hard to burn tofu.)
|
| Other tricks include putting it in the freezer before cooking
| it or microwaving it for 30 seconds before fully cooking. Both
| of these help to remove water from the tofu, making it firmer
| and easier to work with.
|
| Tofu will pick up the flavors of whatever it's cooked with, so
| it's great for adding to dishes with sauces or marinades!
| jibbit wrote:
| i commented this before and it got reddit-style piled on, so i
| deleted it.. but on reflection- i'm not sure why i cared, so
| putting it back: i was looking forward to some good tofu in tokyo
| (in restaurants, not shops - i was on holiday), but was surprised
| it was much harder to find than in america (i'm not from the USA,
| but have also been on holiday there).
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(page generated 2023-12-29 23:01 UTC)