Ingredients:
Extra firm tofu
breading (I used a breading mix from the Farmer’s market, mixed with cajun seasoning)
hot sauce – optional
Pre-cooking Directions:
You will need to drain and press the tofu before working with it. To drain the tofu, take it out of the package and place (wrapped up) inside about 10 paper towels. Place a can of vegetables (or whatever) on top of the paper towel covered tofu. After 20 minutes, repeat this process. You want the tofu to be drained as much as possible, so that is why you’re rewrapping it with fresh paper towels.
Directions:
Preheat the deep fryer to 350*. (There are other – healthier – ways to cook tofu, but for this recipe we are breaking out the deep fryer.)
First, you need to slice the tofu into 1″ cubes. The slab of tofu will be thick, so you will need to cut it in half and then cut it into cubes. Be careful when handling the tofu, as it is fragile.
The tofu will still be a bit moist, so you don’t need to dip it in eggs or anything to be able to bread them. Grab your breading (Hooter’s wing breading is great), and mix it with cajun seasoning if you want it to be spicy. Put it in a gallon zip loc bag, and place the tofu inside. Pour the remaining breading in a bowl and save it, you will need it again in a moment. Shake until well covered. Drop the tofu into the deep fryer. Fry for about 5 minutes.
After 5 minutes, the tofu is still going to be very… for lack of a better word, mushy. Dump it out into a bowl of hot sauce, and then bread it again. If you aren’t using hot sauce, just bread it again. The oil from the deep fryer is going to make the breading stick. Deep fry for another 15 minutes or so. Take a piece out and test it, but it’s probably not done at this point. It took about 30 minutes total for my tofu to be ready. Just keep checking it every few minutes. It will be crunchy on the outside, but unless you cook it long enough it will be too soft on the inside. Keep frying it.
We used spicy ranch to dip ours in (hot sauce mixed with ranch), and it was so good! The kids not only asked for seconds, they asked for thirds.