A Meaty Taste for Vegetarian Dishes

I love eating a nice healthy meal. Good food comes in many forms. To be honest, I am a meat-lover. Whether it be roast chicken or lamb chops, I'm ready to chow down with the rest of the crowd.

I may not be a vegetarian but I do like vegetables and I am not obsessive about not eating meat in my every meal but to give up eating it altogether is a step I have no desire to take. I lived with a roommate once who was a vegetarian, not a vegan, mind you. She aspired to it but she also liked to bake cakes and other things that required milk and eggs, and could not make that commitment just as I cannot give up my occasional hankering for steak, chicken thai curry, or shellfish and like a good veggie steak recipe. My roommate did teach me a neat trick with cooking tofu though that gives it an almost meat like consistency and makes it an active part in my roommate’s vegetarian stir fry dishes.

The tofu trick is actually a pretty simple thing. It involves a few steps. The first step is when you go to the grocery store or wherever you might go to buy your tofu, pick out the firmest kind. This is important in order to get the right consistency. Your next step is to stick that tofu in the freezer and let it become frozen. Then you pull it from the freezer and let it thaw out in your refrigerator.

Obviously if you are going to cook with tofu in this way it involves some planning, but since tofu takes on the taste of its seasonings and the vegetables cooked with it, that should not be too big of a problem. It’s not like a veggie steak recipe where the steak has its own taste independent of the vegetables, but the result is still similar to meat. Once the tofu has defrosted, you need to squeeze out the excess water and the tofu will become crumbly like the consistency of scrambled eggs.

Mix it in with stir fried vegetables and good seasonings and serve with rice. For those times when you do not have to eat steak and do not need a veggie steak recipe, this trick can add tasty protein to your vegetarian meal.