The Secret Ingredient For The Best-Tasting Tofu Is Nutritional Yeast

Even if you love tofu, it's sometimes a bit of an enigma. Though it's easy to find at the grocery store, and you've probably eaten it many different ways at restaurants, when faced with a block of it at home in your own kitchen, it may be difficult to figure out how to make it taste good. The truth is, tofu can be a lot of things, from crispy and chewy to smooth and silky, and it can take on all kinds of flavors, but in its raw form, it can be quite bland. The most important part of cooking with tofu is learning to make it flavorful, and the easiest shortcut to tastiness is a sprinkle of nutritional yeast.

Nutritional yeast and tofu go hand in hand like peas and carrots or peanut butter and jelly. They both burst onto the "health food" scene in the U.S. in the 1970s, and there's no reason to mess with this classic pairing. Nutritional yeast is a flavorful, golden-hued powder that is actually the same strain of yeast that brewers use to make beer, it's just been dried so that it's no longer able to ferment anything. It's got a savory, cheesy, flavor that melds perfectly with tofu to give it lots of umami, bread-like flavors. As long as you have a jar of "nooch," you can make super yummy tofu anytime.

Just like white fish, chicken breast, and pork loin, tofu's flavors are subtler, so it's up to you to make the magic happen. Nutritional yeast is perfect for this job because it has as much of a mouthfeel or essence as a flavor. It's made from Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast, which is grown in sweet liquids (yeast are living cells that like to eat sugar), then harvested, heated, and dried into flakes. If you like bready, yeasty varieties of beer, like ​​hefeweizens, which are made with the same variety of yeast, then you'll definitely like nutritional yeast in your food.

The easiest way to punch up the flavor of your tofu is to make a marinade using nutritional yeast. Tofu may not be meat, but you can still use some of the same tricks you'd use with meat to make it taste good, and tofu will soak up marinade just like any other tasty protein. All you have to do is add a couple of teaspoons of nutritional yeast to any marinade to get the effect. You can either make your own marinade from scratch using cooking oil, vinegar, and spices, or try marinating your tofu in premade vinaigrette salad dressing with a little nutritional yeast mixed in. Leave your tofu in the marinade for at least 30 minutes before you cook it, and you should be rewarded with yummy, savory tofu.

Marinating is not the only way to get the flavor boost of nutritional yeast into your tofu recipes, however. If you don't have time to marinate your tofu you can still use the yeast like a dry spice by rubbing or dredging it onto the surface of your tofu. Try adding it to a spice mix and using nutritional yeast like any other ingredient in a dry rub, or sprinkle a little bit on each side if you're making tofu steaks. You can also add the yeast to your bowl of flour or breadcrumbs if you're planning to dredge the tofu for frying or baking. As an added plus, nutritional yeast plus a little cornstarch (another secret ingredient for tofu) will help make the surface of your tofu a little extra crispy.

As a final little bit of flavor oomph, you can add a sprinkle of nutritional yeast to cooked tofu just like you would parmesan cheese on popcorn or pasta. Simply pop the top of the jar and give it a few shakes, toss the cooked tofu around to distribute the flavor, and serve. If you like cooking with tofu, avoid making common mistakes, and keep nutritional yeast around as your secret weapon for making every bite of your bean curd taste amazing.