Everything You Need To Know About Using Tokwa

Do you love using tokwa as an alternative to meat? If you do, then you already know that the tofu is a great and versatile ingredient to use in many different recipes. 

The tokwa can be used in many different ways and using it as your meat substitute is just one way to not only go meatless. It's also a great way to keep your recipes hearty and filling without the heft of meat. 

There is really only one way to cook tokwa, or the firm tofu, and this is because the firm tofu is older, less fresh than the other kinds of tofu. Tofu comes as silken, semi-firm, and firm forms and it's important to determine the right one you need to use for the recipe you're going to recreate. 

What is the best way to cook tofu? 

We have easy tips and cooking tricks to make sure that when you prepare and cook tofu, the resulting dish a delicious and mouthwatering one. These are all the tips you need to know to cook tofu right: 

Photo by Bianca Laxamana

1 Choose the right tofu. 

The first thing you have to decide when cooking tofu is whether the recipe requires a different kind of tofu from tokwa. This is very important since there are three different kinds of tofu and each one needs to be treated differently or else your recipe will not be the recipe you envisioned it to be. Silken tofu especially will act differently from firm tofu so your dish not be as it should be. 

Photo by Majoy Siason

2 Keep it dry. 

The biggest enemy of tokwa is moisture. Not only will this start off the dreaded talsik or oil splatters, but any moisture on the tokwa will also only prolong the cooking process. Avoid this as well as cooking it longer than you need to by patting your tokwa dry with a kitchen towel or paper towel. Another way to make your tokwa is or by tossing in a thin coating in either flour or cornstarch or by breading it right. If you love breading your fried chicken, use those same tricks when preparing your crispy fried tokwa recipes. 

Is your oil hot enough?

Photo by Wikimedia Commons. Takeaway.

3 Heat the oil right. 

Just like all fried food, you need to make sure that your oil is at the right temperature before you slide in the food that you'll be frying. This remains true for tokwa.

Photo by Majoy Siason

4 Let it brown. 

Frying has to be one of the cooking moments that can test a cook's patience. You wait for the inch of oil to reach the right temperature and then after sliding the tokwa in, you then have to wait some more for the tokwa to turn golden brown. You especially have to exercise your patience when cooking tokwa because it takes minutes for that white flesh to turn golden brown. On each side. Be patient. Nothing is worse than tokwa that hasn't become light and crisp on the outside. 

Photo by Majoy Siason

5 Drain it well. 

If you love cooking fried chicken, you know that the best way to drain it is on a rack. The air can circulate all around the fried food and doesn't result in soggy parts on the bottom where the moisture from condensation isn't allowed to dissipate properly. The same is true for tokwa. Prevent unintentionally soggy fried tokwa by using this same method of draining your tokwa as you would with your fried chicken. 

Photo by Dairy Darilag

6 Toss it with something flavorful. 

Once you have your cooked, crispy tokwa, it's time to make another decision: what are you tossing it with or into? While you can certainly serve it plain with a dipping sauce or toss it in something just as flavorful. What's so great with firm tofu is that after it's been cooked, it turns into a sponge and this quality makes it fantastic for tossing into a flavorful liquid. A marinade that normally might need hours to penetrate meat turns into a sauce for tokwa that you don't have to let soak for more than a few minutes. 

Tokwa recipes can be as simple or as complicated as you want it to be. What is universal is the way you need to cook this kind of tofu. Find our best recipes for tokwa and the other kinds of tofu here: