4 Cookbook Authors’ Very Strong Tofu Opinions
A roundtable with Andrea Nguyen, Nik Sharma, Kiera Wright-Ruiz, and Hetty Lui McKinnon.
A popular recurring topic of conversation in the Best Food Blog Slack channel is: “What’s everyone doing to tofu these days?” We often find ourselves exchanging recipes (scroll to the bottom for some vetted favorites), tips (like Ali’s preferred technique of grating firm tofu and baking it into crispy bits), and pieces of tofu-focused writing (like Lukas Volger’s recent essay about how limiting it is to think of tofu as a health food).
We spend a lot of time cooking and reading about tofu. What can we say? We’re a group of women who love soft foods and protein (ask Anikah about the chicken smoothie she tried in Thailand). As egg prices climb, safety regulations around meat erode, and immigrant workers continue to experience exploitation at the hands of big meatpackers, that $3 block of tofu at the grocery store is looking more beautiful than ever.
For our first-ever Best Food Blog roundtable, we asked four cookbook authors we admire about their most strongly held (and sometimes controversial) opinions on tofu. Andrea Nguyen is the author of Asian Tofu, Vietnamese Food Any Day, Ever-Green Vietnamese, and many other modern classics. Nik Sharma is the author of Season, The Flavor Equation, and Veg-table. Kiera Wright-Ruiz is the author of My (Half) Latinx Kitchen. And Hetty Lui McKinnon is the author of Family, To Asia, With Love, and Tenderheart.
