The tofu pantry

Why the pantry matters more than the equipment

Tofu contributes texture and protein and almost nothing else. Every recipe here works by putting salt, fat, acid and aromatics onto a surface that starts with none of them, which means the bottles on your shelf are doing more work than the pan.

The whole list below costs less than a single mid-range tofu press. It is also the part of the setup that improves other cooking, since none of these are tofu-specific.

Buy the first four and you can cook most of this site. The other five widen the range considerably.

The core four

1. Soy sauce or tamari

The base of nearly every marinade, glaze and sauce here. It brings salt and savory depth in one ingredient, which is precisely what tofu lacks.

Naturally brewed rather than chemically hydrolysed is worth the small premium, and the label usually says. Tamari is the wheat-free version, slightly rounder in flavor, and it substitutes one for one. Coconut aminos are considerably sweeter and much less salty, so if you use them, add salt separately.

2. A starch

Cornstarch, arrowroot or potato starch. A tablespoon tossed onto dried tofu absorbs the last of the surface moisture and gelatinises into a crust that stays crisp far longer than bare tofu does.

Cornstarch is the cheapest and the default. Arrowroot gives a slightly lighter, glassier crust and holds up marginally better under sauce. Potato starch gives the crispest result of the three and is the one to use for anything meant to stay crunchy under a glaze.

3. A chili paste

Chili garlic sauce or sambal oelek. Thick, salty, sour and hot, and unlike a thin hot sauce it clings to a surface rather than running off.

Chili garlic sauce contains garlic already. Sambal oelek is chili, salt and vinegar with nothing else, which makes it the more flexible of the two because you control the aromatics. If you buy one, buy sambal.

4. An acid

Rice vinegar for East and Southeast Asian dishes, lemon or lime for everything else. This is the ingredient people leave out and then wonder why the plate tastes flat.

Buy unseasoned rice vinegar rather than seasoned, which already contains sugar and salt and takes the decision away from you.

The next five

5. Toasted sesame oil

A finishing oil, not a cooking oil. It burns at frying temperatures and turns bitter, so it goes in off the heat at the end where its aroma survives. A teaspoon changes a dish noticeably. Keep it in the refrigerator once opened, because it goes rancid faster than most oils.

6. Smoked paprika

The single most useful spice for tofu, because smoke is a flavor tofu has no way of generating on its own. Spanish pimentón from La Vera is dried over oak smoke and is worth seeking out. Ordinary sweet paprika is a different ingredient and will not substitute.

7. Garlic, in two forms

Fresh for pan sauces added at the end, powder for rubs and pastes that go into an oven. This is not laziness. Fresh garlic burns at roasting temperature and turns acrid, while the powder dissolves into a paste and coats evenly. Recipes that use both are using each for a different job.

8. Something sweet

Maple syrup, honey or brown sugar. A teaspoon balances salt and helps a surface brown, and without it soy-based glazes taste harsh. All three work; maple keeps indefinitely and dissolves instantly.

9. Salt you are willing to use generously

Fine sea salt or kosher salt in a container you can reach into. Tofu absorbs salt without ever reading as salty the way meat does, which means the usual restraint works against you. Salt goes in at three points: the starch coating, the sauce, and onto the hot tofu as it leaves the pan.

The nine, at a glance

Four worth adding later

Kala namak, an Indian black salt with a sulphurous aroma that reads unmistakably as egg. It exists on this list for one recipe, the tofu scramble, and it is the difference between that dish working and not working.

Panko breadcrumbs, larger and drier than ordinary crumbs and the only thing that produces a proper katsu crust. Ordinary breadcrumbs go dense and greasy.

Gochujang, a Korean fermented chili paste that is sweet, savory and slow-burning rather than sharply hot. It behaves differently from sambal and is worth having as a second chili paste rather than a replacement.

Natural peanut butter, which is a sauce base rather than a condiment here. The kind with peanuts and salt on the label rather than added sugar.

Storage and shelf life

Opened soy sauce keeps for months in a cupboard and considerably longer refrigerated, where it holds its aroma better. Chili pastes go in the refrigerator once opened and last a long time.

Ground spices are the ones that quietly fail. Smoked paprika loses most of its character within a year of opening, and a tin that has been in a cupboard for three years is contributing color and very little else. If your paprika smells of nothing when you open the tin, replace it before blaming a recipe.

Toasted sesame oil is the shortest-lived thing here. Refrigerate it and use it within about six months.

Starch keeps indefinitely if it stays dry.

Turning the pantry into a system

Once these are on the shelf, the next step is combining them in advance rather than every time you cook. A thick paste of oil, spice and salt frozen in an ice cube tray gives you two-tablespoon portions sized to one block of tofu, which removes the seasoning decision from the weeknight entirely.

The freezer flavor cubes page covers twelve bases built almost entirely from the items above, along with what freezes badly. The seasoning guide covers the formula they are all variations on.