What is Mexican Tofu?
Mexican tofu is a spicy and flavorful take on tofu that originated in China and can now be found in cuisines across the world. The tofu is seasoned with garlic, cumin, and chili and served hot with salsa. The texture is soft and may be crispy at the edges.
What does Mexican Tofu Taste Like?
Salty is one of the five main tastes. It has a satisfying and addictive quality with hints of sourness. Salty foods include cheeses, cured meats, chips, and olives. It is used in almost every dish and prepared food. Salt is added to enhance flavor and offer a distinctly salty taste.
Spicy is a flavor that brings heat and fire to food by creating a burning sensation in the mouth or sinuses. Spicy flavors come from hot peppers, horseradish, and wasabi. Spicy adds a kick and sometimes complexity to a dish and releases endorphins, creating a mildly addictive quality.
Ingredients
Tofu is also known as bean curd and is a product made by coagulating soy milk and pressing it into blocks. These blocks vary from silky soft, to firm and semi-dense. Tofu is white or off white. Soft tofu has a high water content and falls apart easily, while firmer tofu can look almost grainy with a mouthfeel that is firm and lacking in graininess. Because the flavor of tofu is bland and mild it is an excellent protein to heavily season as it acts like a sponge and absorbs flavor. Tofu is used in many East and Southeast Asian dishes.
Salsa is a dip made from tomatoes, peppers and seasonings. There are many varieties of salsa, some are green, while most are red. Green varieties are made from the tomatillo, while red types have the ingredients listed above. Salsa is thick and chunky with bits of tomato, pepper, onion and other possible ingredients. It is full of juice and moisture and has a savory and tangy flavor that is often spicy. It is served with chips and on many types of Mexican and Central and South American dishes.
Vegetable oil is obtained by extracting oil from seeds. Types of vegetable oil include canola, sunflower, corn, and safflower. Light and with a neutral taste, vegetable oils are used to fry foods, or can be used to lightly coat meats and vegetables before roasting. Vegetable oils are also used as ingredients in salad dressings and sauces.
Sriracha is an extremely popular hot sauce that complements many cuisines, particularly those of East Asia. The sauce is a vibrant red color and is easy to squeeze out of the bottle with its semi-thick viscosity. The smell is sweet and spicy and the flavor is similar with a hint of tanginess and garlic. Sriracha tastes very different from any other hot sauce.
Garlic is used in cuisines around the world and is extremely popular for its depth of flavor. The garlic bulb forms underneath the soil and is harvested once it reaches maturity. The bulb typically has thin, dry, white and flaky skin, surrounding the individual cloves. Often there are 10-12 cloves to a bulb/head of garlic. The cloves are cream colored with a strong smell and flavor that is spicy and sharp. Garlic takes on a nutty flavor in addition, when cooked. It is used in countless dishes, sauces, breads and more.
Salt is a mineral composed mostly of sodium chloride. It is the main flavoring used in food and is naturally occurring in certain foods, such as cheese, beets, meat and celery, plus many others. Salt is white and has finer granules than sugar. Many commercial salts include iodide, while others exclude it. Most salts are white, while some are naturally pale pink with minerals. Salt brings out the flavor of something and can create a tangy mouthfeel, if used in excess.
Lemon juice is made from the flesh of the pulpy yellow lemon fruit. The juice is squeezed from the flesh of the lemon and is a pale yellow color. The flavor is very sour and bright. Lemon juice is used in multiple cuisines around the world to brighten and enhance the flavors of the other ingredients. Lemon juice is used to make lemonade and goes well on fish. It has many uses.
There are many varieties of chili peppers. They are a small, hot pepper. The pepper is dried and ground into a fine powder, that varies in shades of red. Chili powder is a spice blend popular in American and Latin-American cooking. It is usually made from ancho chilies, paprika, oregano and cumin, other spices may be added. It is used in many protein dishes and has a spicy and herbal flavor.
Cumin is a spice used in many cuisines around the world. The seed from which cumin is ground is a thin seed with a long body and tapered ends. Cumin is just a few millimeters in length and has a light brown or tan tone, which can look a bit grey. Ground cumin is light brown and has a flavor that is spicy, earthy and a little nutty. When pan heated, the flavor of cumin is both tempered and enhanced.
