Air Fryer Tofu

What to expect

Taste

Very mild, and it is supposed to be — plain tofu tastes faintly of soaked beans and cream and almost nothing else, which is why every part of the seasoning here is on the outside. Soy sauce gives salt and a fermented savoury depth; the cornflour shell contributes a clean toasted note; white pepper brings a specific dusty, floral heat that black pepper does not. The sesame oil at the end is the loudest single flavour and is doing most of the aromatic work.

Aroma

Almost nothing from the basket, which is unusual and worth saying — this is a nearly odourless recipe until the end. The smell arrives all at once when the toasted sesame oil hits the hot cubes, which is a genuinely dramatic moment and the argument for adding it off the heat rather than before.

Texture

The whole reason to cook tofu this way. A thin, dry, faintly brittle shell over an interior that is soft and custardy without being wet, and the contrast between the two is the dish. Done badly there is no contrast at all: the cube is uniformly soft, slightly rubbery at the surface, and the mouthfeel is the exact thing people object to when they say they do not like tofu. That objection is almost always about water rather than about tofu.

Sound

Very quiet. The most useful sound in the recipe is the shake at eight minutes: unpressed or underdone tofu thuds, and finished cubes rattle loosely against the basket. There is a faint crack when a cube is bitten, and nothing else.

How the flavour moves

Salt from the soy first, then the toasted shell, then the mild creamy interior, and finally the sesame, which lingers longest of anything in the dish. There is very little length otherwise, which is why the sesame and the spring onion are there — they give the mouthful somewhere to end.

Serve it

Hot and within a few minutes. The shell softens steadily as it cools and does not come back on its own, so this is a dish that wants to go straight from the basket to the table.

Goes with

Steamed rice, smashed cucumber salad, garlicky greens, a chilli oil or a soy and vinegar dip. Anything with acid or heat, because the tofu itself brings neither.

Cook's notes

Difficulty

Easy, with one step that takes a quarter of an hour of doing nothing and cannot be skipped.

Cost

Low. A block of tofu and store-cupboard seasonings.

Equipment

An air fryer, two plates and something heavy for pressing — a tin of beans is fine. A dedicated tofu press exists and is not necessary.

When to make it

A weeknight, or as part of a batch-cooked bowl.

Best season

None.

You know it is done when

Golden brown on most faces with darker corners, and the cubes visibly smaller and more angular than they went in. A cube that is still pale and soft-edged after fourteen minutes was not pressed properly, and no extra time will rescue it — it will simply go from wet to dry without ever going crisp.

And it feels like

Pressed between finger and thumb a finished cube gives very slightly and springs back off a firm shell. One that squashes needs longer. The shell should be thin and dry rather than thick, and it should give a faint resistance before the soft interior.

Food safety

Tofu is a ready-to-eat product and needs no particular safety treatment; the cooking here is for texture. Keep opened blocks covered in water in the fridge and change the water daily.

Where it goes wrong

• Skipping the press, which is the single reason most air-fried tofu is disappointing.
• Buying firm or silken tofu instead of extra-firm.
• Putting the cornflour on before the oil, which makes a paste that slides off and burns onto the basket.
• Stirring rather than folding, which knocks the corners off — and the corners are the part that crisps.
• Crowding the basket, so the cubes steam each other.
• Adding sesame oil before cooking, where it burns and turns bitter.
• Letting it sit for ten minutes before serving.

If it does go wrong

Pale and soft after fifteen minutes: not pressed, or the wrong tofu. Coating stuck to the basket rather than the cube: cornflour went on before the oil, or the machine was not preheated. Dry and hard all through: too long, or the cubes were cut smaller than 2.5cm. Bitter: the sesame oil went in before cooking. Cubes fused into a mass: the basket was full.

Making it ahead

Press and cube up to a day ahead and keep in the fridge, which continues to dry the surface and helps. The cooked tofu does not wait.

Keeping it

Two days in the fridge, though the shell is gone by then.

Reheating

Five minutes at 190C/375F restores most of the crispness, which is more than can be said for most fried things.

Freezing

Cooked tofu freezes poorly. Raw tofu freezes deliberately, as a technique — it changes the internal structure into something spongy and chewy that soaks up marinade, and is worth trying as a variation.

Leftovers

Good cold in a salad, or folded into fried rice where the sauce covers for the lost crust.

Scaling it

By batch. A 400g block fills a 4-litre basket in a single layer with barely any room to spare, so two blocks means two runs.

Substitutions

Tamari in place of soy sauce makes the recipe gluten free. Potato starch or arrowroot works in place of cornflour and gives a slightly lighter shell. Freezing and thawing the block before pressing is a well-known technique that opens up the texture into something spongier and chewier; it is a different result rather than a better one, and it takes a day.

Dietary swaps

Contains soya, sesame, and gluten from the soy sauce unless tamari is used. Vegan, vegetarian, dairy free, egg free and nut free as written.

Shopping for it

Look for extra-firm rather than firm, and for a block packed with as little water as possible. Vacuum-packed blocks from East Asian grocers are often firmer than supermarket tubs and need less pressing.

Keeping the cost down

One of the cheapest protein sources available by weight, and cheaper still from an East Asian grocer than from a supermarket chiller.

Sustainability

Among the lowest-impact protein sources available, by a considerable margin over any animal protein in this collection.

Nutrition

A complete plant protein with a tablespoon of oil across two servings, and considerably less fat than either deep-fried or pan-fried tofu.

Worth it?

Fifteen minutes of pressing is the entire difference between the version people like and the version that gave tofu its reputation.

Where it comes from

Origin

China.

Also called

Doufu in Mandarin; tofu is the Japanese reading of the same characters and is the name that reached English.

Said out loud

TOH-foo.

What the name means

The characters mean, roughly, bean curd.

History

Tofu originates in China and spread across East and Southeast Asia over many centuries, arriving in Western home cooking only in the twentieth. The frequently repeated attribution to Liu An, prince of Huainan, in the second century BCE, rests on much later sources and is not securely evidenced; some scholars have argued for a considerably later date of origin. It is a genuinely open question and the confident version told in most recipe introductions is not supported by the material.

Why it matters

A staple protein across East and Southeast Asia in dozens of forms — silken, firm, dried, fermented, smoked, skinned — of which the firm block sold in Western supermarkets is only one. Its reputation in the West as a bland substitute for meat says more about how it has been cooked there than about the ingredient.

When it is eaten

A weeknight.

The traditional way

Deep frying and pan frying are both long-standing, and both work by driving water out of the surface fast. The air fryer is doing the same job more slowly, which is why the pressing step matters more here than it does in a wok.

Regional variations

The cornflour coating is closest to the Chinese practice of dusting before frying. Korean, Japanese and Southeast Asian treatments differ considerably and many of them do not coat at all.

How this version differs

It spends three steps on the pressing and the coating order, which is where the result is actually decided, rather than on the seasoning.

Related recipes

Categories

Courses & dish types

DinnerMain courses

Diets

VeganVegetarian

Techniques & equipment

Air fryer