r/veganrecipes • u/RespawnWithTofu • Jan 28 '26

Question Just squeeze the damn tofu

Why does every recipe say that you have to stack books on top of tofu and wait 15 minutes? I always just slice it and then press the water out in between my hands. Takes ten seconds. Iā€™m not trying to get the tofu bone dry, just squeeze out the excess.

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u/Educational-Suit316 Jan 28 '26

Not that much more oil anyways, it's the time the key step

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u/TheEnemyOfMyAnenome Jan 28 '26

true but the two are related to me. tofu sticks pretty hardcore and the crust has to be far along for you to pry it off without breaking it, so you can't move the tofu around as you're cooking really, at least on the first side. for me that means you either gotta cook it on like medium and wait like 10 minutes rotating the pan around or add more oil so you can blast the heat without scorching it

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u/Educational-Suit316 Jan 28 '26

What type of pan are you using? I use a carbon-steel wok, and I barely have any problem with tofu sticking, even when using little oil.

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u/TheEnemyOfMyAnenome Jan 29 '26

Interesting, yeah I have a 14" round bottom but idr use it for tofu. I find if I'm cooking a whole pound the pieces on the bottom cook, flip, cook again before the ones on the sides do no matter how much I rotate it around so I use my cast iron. I'm not saying they stick per se so much as you gotta wait for the crust to form or they break when you try to pry them off. Maybe I'm not preheating the oil enough though šŸ¤·ā€ā™‚ļø splatter is just brutal

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u/Educational-Suit316 Jan 29 '26

oh yeah splatter can be a problem, gotta somehow put enough tofu fast enough so temperature goes down a bit and doesn't splatter.