Hot-Smoked Tofu In No Time: Vegetarian Egg-Fried Rice Recipe
By Nicola Lando
-
10 minutes prep time
-
40 minutes cook time
-
Intermediate
Smoking is a great way add flavour to tofu. If you're pushed for time, just pat a piece of tofu dry, pop it in your stovetop hot smoker, and leave to smoke for 15 to 30 minutes. This is what we've done in our smoked tofu fried rice recipe below.
However, if you have time and can plan ahead, marinate the tofu the night before in a mixture of light soy sauce, sugar or maple syrup and a little water to dilute, for something even more richly flavoured! Again pat dry and simply smoke in the hot smoker. Then enjoy in Chinese dishes, in salads, or just as a snack.
The Cameron Gourmet Mini Smoker will easily fit a 200g block of firm tofu (see image below).
When ready to smoke you'll lift the stainless steel tray and grid with the tofu onto the wood chips (they sit in the base and gently smoulder), close the lid, and pop on the hob.
Once the tofu has been smoking for 15 minutes, you'll start to see an orange smoke-tint at the edges. Taste it, and see if you'd like to smoke it for longer...
... we carry on smoking for 30 minutes, which makes the whole piece of tofu a light chestnut colour (see below). If you prefer the smoke flavour even stronger, you can cut the tofu into pieces before placing it in the smoker.
Smoked tofu works very well in a simple egg-fried rice dish. And of course it looks great served on the beautiful Midori Round Sushi Plate. See recipe below.
Ingredients Serves: 2
- 200g firm tofu
- 1 tbsp sunflower oil
- 1 small onion, diced
- 2 eggs, beaten together with a pinch of salt
- Handful cooked peas or edamame beans
- 1 tsp Japanese soy sauce
- 1 tsp sesame oil
- 3 cups of cooked rice
- Salt & white pepper to season
- Spring onion greens, sliced, to garnish
- Hickory wood chips
Method
- First smoke the tofu. Place tofu in a Cameron stovetop smoker, and smoke on a low heat over hickory wood for 30 minutes. Cut into 1cm cubes.
- Fry the onion in sunflower oil over a low heat until translucent, but not brown. Add the eggs and move around until set and lightly scrambled. Add the edamame beans, soy sauce and sesame oil. Mix.
- Add the tofu and cooked rice to the mixture and stir together to warm through. Season with salt and white pepper. Serve garnished with spring onion greens.
About the author
Nicola is co-founder and CEO at Sous Chef. She has worked in food for over ten years.
Nicola first explored cooking as a career when training at Leiths, before spending the next decade in Finance. However... after a stage as a chef at a London Michelin-starred restaurant, Nicola saw the incredible ingredients available only to chefs. And wanted access to them herself. So Sous Chef was born.
Today, Nicola is ingredients buyer and a recipe writer at Sous Chef. She frequently travels internationally to food fairs, and to meet producers. Her cookbook library is vast, and her knowledge of the storecupboard is unrivalled. She tastes thousands of ingredients every year, to select only the best to stock at Sous Chef.
Nicola shares her knowledge of ingredients and writes recipes to showcase those products. Learning from Sous Chef's suppliers and her travels, Nicola writes many of the recipes on the Sous Chef website. Nicola's recipes are big on flavour, where the ingredients truly shine (although that's from someone who cooks for hours each day - so they're rarely tray-bakes!).
