You can get smoked tofu in many stores. It’s also easy to make your own.

Ingredients

• 500 gr tofu
• Rice (about half a cup or more, depending on the size of your pan). It doesn’t matter what kind of rice you use. The purpose of the rice is to keep your tea leaves from burning up too fast.
• Black tea (2 tablespoons)–loose-leaf is what you want, but you can also tear up some tea bags and get the tea out.
• A bit of cooking oil (or oil spray).

Equipment

• Heavy duty pot with lid–something that will withstand high temperatures. Cast iron is ideal.
• Smoking insert. You can use a wood chip holder sold for adding smoke flavor in a gas barbecue. It’s easy to make your own too. I use a take-out aluminum pie pan to contain the rice and tea leaves and put another such pan over this like a loose cover with a flat top. The top pan has holed poked into it with a knife to let smoke out. Alternatively, you can use heavy duty aluminum foil to line the bottom of your pot, put your rice and tea on this, then put another piece of foil (with holes poked into it) over this. Your tofu will sit on the top piece of aluminum.

Method

1. Add enough rice to your smoking pan to get a depth of 1-2 cm. Mix your tea leaves into this.
2. Place the smoking pan in your pot and cover the pan with its perforated top.
3. Slice your tofu into shapes and sizes you like, keeping in mind that you’ll want the pieces to fit onto your pot in one layer. Lightly oil your smoking pan’s lid, then place the tofu on it.
4. Cover the pot and turn the heat on high. Once wisps of smoke start coming out, you can turn the heat down to medium high.
5. Smoke as long as you want: 15 minutes for lightly smoked to 45 minutes for deeply smoked. Turn the pieces of tofu over about halfway through.

You can slice this smoked tofu to use as a deli meat substitute in a sandwich, cut it into cubes to use in stir fries or stews, or who knows what else.

Pictures

Numbers correspond to the steps in the methods section

1 Mix rice and tea leaves in an aluminum pan. I’ve squished this one a bit so it’ll fit in my big pot.

2 Place the aluminum pan inside a big pot

2, 3 Fashion and place an aluminum cover, perforated with a knife, over your aluminum pan. Oil this cover lightly. Place your tofu pieces on top.

4, 5 Heat pot until smoke starts to appear. Cover and smoke for as long as you want (15 to 45 minutes recommended, depending on how smoky you want the tofu to taste).

5 About halfway through, turn your tofu and then continue smoking until it’s ready. If you change your mind and want to smoke it longer, turn it over again so both sides are smoked more or less evenly.

Enjoy