I just thought it might be fun to chat generally about making these proteins from scratch, and hear what people’s experiences are with it.

Tofu:

I’ve been watching Will It Tofu videos lately and it inspired me to make some pumfu from scratch because it’s a bit cheaper that way and you also get the byproducts which can be reused too.

It’s really fun to do because watching the milk separate into curds feels like mad science or witchy or something. It really turned out great, except I only got about 2/3rds the amount of pumfu out of process as they said I should. The only thing I can think of is maybe I didn’t blend it well enough, so I’m going to try some tricks to blend it better next time.

Anyway, you get 3 products from it:

  1. Tofu - pumpkin seed tofu is so good, it’s just expensive. It’s just fattier than soy, so it really lends it to sausage-like preparations. I spice it like chorizo, pan fry it as a crumble and serve it over a tostada with black bean refritos and some veggies. I try not to overpower the flavor of the pumfu itself. It’s killer.
  2. Okara - This is the pulp leftover when you squeeze out the nutmilk. You can find recipes for it. A lot of people bulk out baking recipes with it. I combined it with a mashed potato and veggies and made a potato/okara pancake with it and dressed it with some thai chili sauce. The nuttiness of the pumpkin seed really came through, and it’s really good. I’ll need to add a bit of binder next time though, because it was pretty fragile. I’ve also heard you can rehydrate the okara, add nootch, and have a nice ricotta replacement, and tasting the raw okara, that makes sense. I may try it.
  3. Whey - This is leftover when you press the curds into tofu. This makes a nice broth, and it added some depth to my instant ramen.

Seitan:

I’ve been making this from scratch for years. It’s pretty easy.

I’ve tried both the “wash out” method where you wash the starch out of whole flour, and the method where you just start with gluten flour. I don’t feel like the final product benefits much from the extra work of washing it out, so I just do it lazy-style.

There’s lots of recipes out there for different mix-ins and different methods to cook. Personally, I like a very chewy, spongy, fluffy seitan, so I don’t mix-in any other flours and then I boil it unwrapped in small pieces so it can fluff out a bit. Then I’ll just do other prep from there. I love a nice fried buffalo seitan “wing.”

I find that adding other flours (chickpea is common) makes a final product that’s more like tofurky. That has it’s place, but I’m a bit of a sicko and want the spongy stuff.

Tempeh:

I never made this from scratch, but if anyone has, I’d love to hear your experiences.

Has anyone out there experimented with this stuff? Going forward I’m definitely going to be pressing more weird tofus. I accidentally got too many red lentils a while back, so that’s probably going to be my next tofu.