Ask Jack – Cooking with Tofu | S5E34

Welcome to Living Well with MS, where we are pleased to welcome Jack McNulty as our guest! Jack is a professional cook and a longtime follower of the Overcoming MS Program. In this episode, he answers questions from the community about how to cook with tofu.

Watch this episode on YouTube here. Keep reading for the key episode takeaways.

Topics and Timestamps:

01:42 What is tofu?

02:37 Is it possible to make tofu from scratch?

03:59 Benefits of adding tofu to your diet.

05:54 Debunking the myth that ‘tofu is bland’.

07:03 Saturated fat levels in tofu.

08:52 Different types and textures of tofu.

16:24 The difference between tofu and tempeh.

21:49 Ways to change the texture of tofu.

28:57 Do you have to press tofu before cooking?

31:22 Jack’s favourite tofu marinades and recipes.

Selected Key Takeaways:

Tofu is an affordable, easy-to-digest, source of protein. 
04:25 “Tofu is fairly easy to digest. A lot of people who may have trouble [digesting] legumes can actually digest tofu a little bit easier than they can from the whole bean, which is nice. It's definitely a good source of protein. It’s really affordable. The other thing that I think that's really interesting with tofu is it's basically just a blank canvas."

Tofu vs. tempeh
17:01 “Tofu is made from soy milk from the whole soybean turned into milk and then coagulated. Tempeh which originates from Indonesia (and you see it a lot in Indonesian cooking) is [made from] whole beans. It's generally soybeans, but it can be made with other kinds of beans like chickpeas and is pressed together and inoculated with a mold and then packaged so it has this sort of white net around the beans, which gives it a very specific flavour.”

Pressing tofu can make it dry.  
29:19 “You want to be careful [pressing tofu] because you're forcing out a lot of the moisture from the interior of the tofu that's going to make it fundamentally dry at the end. I would be very cautious with recipes that say, ‘start off by pressing the tofu’. I think it's much better to take a different approach, maybe freeze it, maybe pour some boiling salted water over it, or marinate it rather than pressing it.”

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More info and links:

• Try Jack’s Marinated & Dry-sautéed Tofu
• Try Jack’s Tofu Vegan Mayonnaise
• Listen to ‘S4E48: Ask Jack’ for his tofu scramble recipe

• New to Overcoming MS? Visit our introductory page 
• Connect with others following Overcoming MS on the Live Well Hub
• Visit the Overcoming MS website

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