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Comment by rob74 | Hacker News Reader

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Tofu is great, just misused as a meat alternative. The Chinese and Japanese don’t use it as a meat alternative (dishes like mapo tofu and agedashi tofu contain both meat/fish and tofu), they use it to provide textural support and contrast to rich, full-flavoured dishes.

If the negative association you have is because of its use in organic kale tofu salads and the like, that’s not exactly tofu’s problem.

It's not tofu's fault, but it kind of is tofu's problem imo, since it seems to be a common view. Until a couple of years ago I had pretty much the same view as GP, that tofu was bland with an unpleasant texture and I couldn't imagine anyone eating it for pleasure - based on my experiences of how it was cooked/served by restaurants and friends here in England.

Eventually I tried a tofu dish while sharing plates with a couple of vegan friends at a Chinese restaurant and was amazed at how tasty it was, so I then spent the time to figure out how to cook it in such a way that I actually enjoy! It's not exactly close to being my favourite ingredient, but I do now eat it fairly often since it's healthy and tasty.

I think this experience - being put off tofu by the amount of people who make awful tofu dishes under the justification of it being healthy and vegan - is quite common, and it would be great if more people can discover ways they actually enjoy it.

(Side note, my #1 favourite way of preparing Tofu is roughly this recipe - I'm away from my desk and can't remember the tweaks I made, but they're not significant: https://frommybowl.com/crispy-tofu-recipe/ Bake it following that recipe, then it's ready to chuck into a salad, or stir fry, or some sort of sauce, or...)

I think the reputation of tofu as bland is not dissimilar to people claiming to dislike veggies as bitter.

I mean, disliking a food because it was cooked incorrectly is the problem of the eater, not the food. I can cook a steak well-done, that doesn't mean all steak is now bad.

If you're going to be pedantic then clearly steak and tofu are both dead forms of protein so they don't care whether people eat them or not. When I said it's a problem for the food I obviously (I thought) meant that in western countries it's a problem from the point of view of it becoming a popular food.

It's a problem because it's cooked incorrectly in the Western world. That's again not the problem of the food itself but of people not learning to cook it properly.

1B+ asians eat tofu as a regular ingredient and not as a "meat alternative missing any kind of taste, smell or texture." In fact, not only are there DOZENS of kinds of tofu with wildly different textures and flavors, but even within a category, brands have big differences. The Japanese eat tofu uncooked and cold, drizzled with sauces (soy i.e. more soybean product!) and spices (ginger) - it's called hiyayakko, it's delicious and available as an inexpensive appetizer in most japanese restaurants and sushi bars.

https://www.google.com/search?q=hiyayakko

Tofu is not a "meat alternative". It's just a food, made from soy.

I like tofu much more than I like most meats.

I believe that achieving perfection in naming things is an elusive goal. This is not only because individuals often associate their own unique meanings with words, but also because a chosen name may inadvertently carry offensive connotations in different languages.

(in my opinion) Tofu is much better than the other alternative they suggested like Archo or EchoSphere.

Disclaimer - I also do some work with Env0 which is part of the OpenT(o)F(u) initiative

Not all tofu lacks texture or flavour. You have only tried the simplest version I guess.

I'm aware of smoked tofu at least, but still, if you order, let's say, an Indian dish with tofu instead of meat, you usually get the "basic" tofu version.

In fact stinky tofu is very common!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stinky_tofu

My first thought was Tofu-dreg (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tofu-dreg_project) which isn't really the association you want.

As much as I actually like tofu the food, I'd agree that OpenTofu isn't a great name.

that's on you i think. quite a lot of people enjoy tofu and it's a cute name imo.

I think that's the point, right? They'd prefer Terraform, they're setting for Tofu. They say as much in the readme. It's pretty clever.

Aside: tofu done right is great. Nobody treating it as a meat substitute is doing it right.

If your experience of tofu is only the above, I completely understand your distaste for it. But I think you owe it to yourself to try better tofu, and not as a meat alternative. Tofu on its own doesn't have much flavour, but that's the point, you need to marinate it. Google can give you some tips (squeeze the water out, then soak it in something delicious -- hell, soak it in meat juices!), but I highly recommend trying some good, low moisture smoked firm tofu. It's so good, I often just snack on it, slicing it like a sausage. But it's also great in things like burritos to add a smokey kick. Try it!

Did you create a new account just for this comment? Love this energy! And, I agree, tofu is great.

you need to widen your horizon more, mate.

We regularly eat tofo (tastes great) but never as a replacement for meat.

> a meat alternative missing any kind of taste, smell or texture

1. It's traditionally not a meat alternative. 2. One should try properly cooked tofu before judging that it's "missing any kind of taste, smell or texture".

Adding to the many people who have already recommended tasty tofu recipes, one of my favorites is this crispy tofu recipe from the NYT:

https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1020993-tofu-and-green-b...

most of the world loves tofu.

The old "billions of flies cannot be wrong" defense.

the billion of flies aren't wrong if you're a fly

What about people who don’t like Cocoa, CherryPY, CakePHP, BaCon (lesser known Basic to C converter), or other tools with names related to food?

We can’t accommodate everyone’s food preferences.

To make everyone happy I guess we’d have to call it Chef, and we can’t do that either.

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