It seems the start of Spring has signalled many brands to expand their range of products, and Tofoo is one such brand. I tend to only buy their tofu blocks, as they are pretty affordable and their firm tofu is good for scramble recipes. But this is the first time I’ve seen ready meals available from them.
I do find tofu to be a very fickle mistress. I have found a way that works for me when it comes to cooking tofu, but I also know it is not Perfect Tofu – it can still be a little watery and it doesn’t always crumble the way I would prefer it to. But I make do because, in all honesty, I’m not super precious about my tofu. Preparing tofu though is quite labour intensive, and sometimes after a long day of work or a tiring day out and about, I do want something far easier to work with. So i was quite excited for these Southern fried steaks.
Unfortunately though, these weren’t really worth it. Whilst the southern fried crumble on the top was tasty, and it did crisp up nicely after cooking and had a very nice crunch to it all, the actual tofu was too wet and so the crumble very much fell of it. The tofu itself didn’t really taste of anything, so it seems that all of the flavour is in the crumble rather than the tofu itself. Tofu can be marinated to lock in lots of the flavours, but this has clearly not been done with these. Therefore as soon as I tried to place the tofu steaks onto the baking try, the crumble was already starting to fall off as it had nothing to actually attach to. The whole meal therefore, even once cooked, ended up a little bit of a mess and I ended up with tofu scramble anyway, just with a slight Southern fried flavouring.
The steaks were also rather expensive, at £3. You do get two steaks per pack, so I suppose it’s not too expensive a dinner option if you wanted something quick, however seeing as how the product barely stays together even after cooking, it does feel a little underwhelming. As I said before, I find tofu to be a tricky product to work with, so maybe there is a trick I am missing to make these steaks hold together better. But then again I am buying this product to be an easy meal, and it is very much marketed as an easy meal to prepare, so really I shouldn’t have to do anything else to it at all in order to make it a functional meal.
Taylor Talks Vegan 