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Comment by ecshafer | Hacker News Reader

This is a nice article, but it does have some parts that seem off base. First you can walk into any chinese grocery store (in america) and get 20 kinds of tofu, thats really not an issue, and chinese restaurants (in chinatown) will sell many kinds of tofu.

The other is that the author makes the mistake of over emphasizing the vegetarianism aspect (which i think some comments here also are). Many chinese dishes with tofu flavor them with meat. Outside of a temple, the vegetarian aspect isnt really important, tofu is just another dish. Tofus attachment with being a meat replacement or a vegetarian food is the major reason its not eaten more by americans.

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Right. I've been eating tofu in the US all my adult life, since about 1983 or so. Everywhere I've lived (FL, GA, NC, AZ, CA) it's been available in standard grocery stores, generally with several varieties. Asian markets, as you note, have many varieties.

I have a number of vegetarian tofu recipes I like but... my favorite Ma Po tofu recipes (there are innumerable versions) have meat in them.

I really dislike how common, ancient foodstuffs get tilted into ideological pigeonholes. There's a galaxy of vegetarian Chinese dishes, of which tofu is just one component. I've started to learn about Asian pickles and oh dear how deep it goes. Just fantastic, and delicious!

Anyway it never occurred to me that people shy away from tofu because it's vegetarian; people cook with eg beans and vegetables, right? I always thought it was because hardly anyone cooks traditional Chinese dishes at home. I didn't do it much myself until I discovered Fuschia Dunlop.

My wife (who is from china) has been doing a lot of pickling in the chinese tradition. Theres a lot of pickled chinese dishes with very interesting taste profiles, especially some of the peppers. In the us we mostly dint pickle much, outside of cucumbers and cabbage, with some things like pickled sausage or eggs having a certain low class / poor canotation. But china pickles a huge variety of foods.

> until I discovered Fuschia Dunlop

What's that? A purple tire? A recipe?

http://www.fuchsiadunlop.com/books/

She's a British author and cook who has written extensively about Chinese cooking.

Which of her books do you recommend for the relatively experienced home cook who's done a little bit of imitation Chinese cooking?

Anybody can cook the recipes in "Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook" and "The Food of Sichuan". I would caution people unfamiliar with authentic Chinese food that these are not the flavors of 99% of US Chinese restaurants. To our palette they are vastly better. Sometimes shockingly so, as for example her General Tso's chicken. You cook that correctly you'll get nauseous thinking about American/Chinese General Tso's chicken.

What you will probably have a problem with is getting the more exotic ingredients. I could not find some things in Ranch 99 markets, and now that I live in the Atlanta area it's quite a bit harder. Fortunately quite a few items are available on Amazon.

I suspect HMarts in the Boston area should have everything I need. Thanks for the comment.

"Every Grain of Rice" is my favorite cookbook ever. Its emphasis is home cooking so the recipes are pretty practical and it covers more than just Sichuan or Hunan cuisine so there is a lot of variety. The amazing part is that almost all the recipes are delicious. I've made over 120 of the recipes and the percentage of hits vs misses is amazing, probably 90% are things I would make again and a couple dozen have become essential.

The book also has a good section on ingredients and techniques. Many of the recipes are available in her other books (all worthwhile, Fuchsia is my hero), but sometimes slightly simplified here for accessibility and speed.

He is not wrong, the picture in the article has 11 kinds of tofu, if I visit all 3 Chinese grocery stores in the Seattle area (Asian Food Center in Seattle, Ranch 99 in Shoreline, Jing Jing in Factoria), I could probably get 6 or 7 in total out of 11. T&T Supermarket in BC has a slightly better inventory, but I doubt they will have all 11 in stock. If you are not on the east/west coast, the selection will be even smaller and worse in quality.

The "20 kinds of tofu" you can get in any Chinese grocery stores are often slightly changed variants (i.e. silk, soft, firm, hard tofu are pretty similar), and usually poor in quality.

He did not exaggerate the vegetarianism aspect as well, if you visit Temples in China, affiliated / non-affiliated restaurants nearby boasts "vegetarian feast" aka "全素斋" , some even name it a culture as "素斋文化". They make Tofu taste like meat and looks like meat, it is definitely a big thing and you could search for photos on how close these food look like real meat/fish and the popularity.

"全素斋"/"vegetarian feast" restaurants definitely exist in the US. Buddha Bodai in Manhattan's Chinatown is excellent, even for meat eaters.

> if I visit all 3 Chinese grocery stores in the Seattle area (Asian Food Center in Seattle, Ranch 99 in Shoreline, Jing Jing in Factoria), I could probably get 6 or 7 in total out of 11

Are you sure?

I’m pretty sure you can get all but the Jianshui one (I actually don’t know what this is) at 99 Ranch in San Jose.

The catch is that someone might not know what these various tofus are if they don’t know what they look like uncut and/or they don’t read Chinese.

> The "20 kinds of tofu" you can get in any Chinese grocery stores are often slightly changed variants (i.e. silk, soft, firm, hard tofu are pretty similar)

This is definitely not true at 99 Ranch. There are way more than that.

> Are you sure?

>I’m pretty sure you can get all but the Jianshui one (I actually don’t know what this is) at 99 Ranch in San Jose.

You make a good point. My friend from San Jose always describes himself as being from the Seattle area. Sometimes he calls San Jose “Shoreline Washington” (apparently something locals say)

> They make Tofu taste like meat and looks like meat, it is definitely a big thing and you could search for photos on how close these food look like real meat/fish and the popularity.

That is not tofu, though, that is mock-meat, mock-fish, mock-chicken etc made entirely out of gluten and is highly processed.

Mock-whatever does, indeed, have the texture of and is flavoured according to what it «mocks». Tofu, on the other hand, can't be substantially textured, hence the choice of gluten.

The reason Chinese people would say it taste like meat is not because it "taste" like meat. it taste like what the meat dish is supposed to be. Our brain connects flavor with memory, and Chinese people would immediately connect the sensation with the meat dish they had before, that's why we say it tastes like meat. Gluten, Tofu, Mushrooms, there are many ingredients in Chinese cooking to replicate texture of meat.

Agreed. Tofu is just another food. Being only for vegetarians is just bad marketing. :)

I have some stuff in boxes that live in the panty next to the rest of my beans and just use it whenever.

As a Japanese, I was surprised that Tofu is almost always treated as a meat alternative in the US, even in many Chinese restaurants. Where is Mapo-tofu :face-with-rolling-eyes:

But I would consider the tofu-as-meat-alternative "marking" a success, given the massive adoption compared to other Asian ingredients which are pushed to the small Asian corner of the grocery stores.

Do you not have mapo tofu where you live? Out West it's in a lot of Chinese-ish restaurants, usually with meat, and usually done poorly (sadly). I wish I could find a good one... easy enough to make at home though.

Yeah, saying you're making tofu for dinner is interpreted ideologically in the rural US. Along with your choice of beer and snack chips. I'm not surprised that ideology (and anger!) has been commoditized in the states; after all, if there's a single founding principle in our nation, it's staying out of my way unless your way involves me making a buck. But it's more than a little depressing how easily people get schnookered.

Anyway, dinner is meat, and dessert is this: take one part 65% chocolate chips, melt in microwave[1], add to equal weight silk tofu in bowl of 12 c food processor, whir until combined, spoon into oreo cookie crust, refrigerate 6 hours or overnight. You might never make mousse again. I mean, mousse is better, but it's also 20x fussier. Want some deeper flavor? Add 1 tsp coffee powder, 1 tsp vanilla to the choc/tofu before whir, or lighten[2] with a few tbsp heavy cream.

I've got friends who can't boil water, and I taught 'em this recipe, and to this day it's their best dessert they know how to make. I'm a little proud of the simple recipes like that.

[1] Do you know how to melt chocolate in the nuker without scorching it? Look that up first.

[2] Yes, lighten! The cream catches more air, lifts up the "tofousse" a bit. If you like it even more puffy, add a tub of dairy whip topping, but this makes for a floppy pie when sliced unless you add gelatin.

What does "scoop into Oreo cookie crust" mean? Like spoon the mixed glop onto individual Oreos? Or do they sell some sort of pie crust made of Oreo cookies...? Have a hard time imagining what the finished product is.

https://www.walmart.com/ip/OREO-Chocolate-Sandwich-Cookie-Pi...

Yeah, they sell them premade, but it's the same as a graham cracker crust, but made with oreos. You can make 'em yourself too - 10 oreos, 2 tbsp melted butter, 2 tbsp sugar in the food processor, whir until crumbs, then press into a pie tin until it looks like a crust, and bake @350{deg} for 8m. You'll probably want to let this cool a bit before spooning in the tofu stuff, and it's never a super good idea to put hot stuff in the fridge - it makes an "island" of potentially unsafe storage temperatures..

Tragically, another great ingredient, Famous Chocolate Wafers, was discontinued this year . . icebox cake lovers are still recovering.

https://www.southernliving.com/discontinued-nabisco-famous-w...

> saying you're making tofu for dinner is interpreted ideologically in the rural US

Saying you're "making tofu for dinner" would be interpreted as a vegan/vegetarian dogwhistle by most rural Americans, rightfully so. I've made many dishes with tofu and meat for rural friends and family (without mentioning tofu at all), and they loved it, to the point of asking me where to buy it for their own dishes.

> Yeah, saying you're making tofu for dinner is interpreted ideologically in the rural US.

That seems like a pretty broad generation. Are you sure it's true?

Elsewhere in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38816222

> The other is that the author makes the mistake of over emphasizing the vegetarianism aspect (which i think some comments here also are).

The author is specifically writing from a vegetarian/vegan perspective, as noted in the article:

> I was now here on the pretense of “study abroad,” but really just crisscrossing the country to find foods that would excite me and other would-be vegans back in Los Angeles. I had to learn about the tofu dumpling of love.

Emphasis mine.

Since meat is expensive, maybe it is more about 'stretching' a dish. If you can only afford one cut of meat, but need to feed four, the tofu is used to get more protein in cheaply.

That has always been my impression.

Is tofu actually cheaper than meat in China? Here it usually seems to cost more per pound.

If you're talking about block tofu, it's like $1.50/lb where I live (Seattle), which is considerably cheaper than meat.

Oh really? Where I live (central Oregon), tofu is like usually like $2-$4/block, while meat (chicken, ground beef) is about $4/lbs.

And if you get any sort of processed food (nuggets, sausages, etc.), the fake meats are way more expensive than the real stuff :(

Yup, even Buddhist do not eat Tofu as “meat”. They’re usually a form soy product but not exclusively tofu.

I would like to add that, yes, tofu is added to meat dish as a complimentary, not exactly to flavor it with meat. When you say flavor it with meat, I would assume meat is the ingredient to flavor tofu, mostly it is not true, meat is the main dish, and tofu, eggs can be used as additional to the dish.

Many times when we say fish-flavored dish, for Chinese it means we cook it the same way as fish, use the spices we use to cook fish. The same goes with tofu. Chinese dishes are strong in spices, the flavor mostly comes from spices, and those flavor connects to your brain, that's how you can make a vegetarian dish taste like a meat dish, with the correct texture and flavor.

Although vegetarian is not a big thing in China, we do eat a lot vegetables, it is a must to have vegetables for every meal.

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