Crispy, tasty fried tofu recipe

After years of trying to find quick and easy fried tofu recipes, I've finally landed on my favorite. This recipe uses one standard 14 ounce block of tofu found in the United States.

You can use this tofu in a million different dishes. I like making wraps with beans, guacamole, and salsa with it.

After the tofu is fried, it refrigerates very well and can also be frozen. 

Quick tips before we start:

• Use extra firm tofu 
• Freeze tofu and then let defrost. 
• This gives the tofu a "meatier" texture, and also makes it easier to squeeze the water out.

Ingredients: 

1 - Package of tofu, frozen and thawed (14 oz.)

2 Tbsp natural peanut butter

2 Tbsp soy sauce

Cornstarch to coat the tofu

Oil to fry the tofu. I like peanut the best for this recipe, but vegetable oil works. Avoid olive oil because it smokes to easily while frying.

Mix the peanut butter and soy sauce to create a fairly thin paste. We're going to use this as a marinade. If the sauce is too thick, add some more soy sauce to thin in out. The paste/marinade/sauce should be thin enough to spread over the tofu and absorb into it.

With your hands, squeeze the tofu from the top to the bottom to expel the water. After you've squeezed the tofu from top to bottom about 3 times, slice the tofu in the middle, lengthwise, from top to bottom. In other words, you should have two thin pieces of tofu that are the same height  and width as the original block.

Put the pieces of tofu in a dish that will hold all of the tofu while you coat it with the marinade.

Pour the marinade over tofu and use a spatula to squeeze and let go of the tofu, thereby allowing the marinade to get sucked into the tofu somewhat.

If you have time, allow the tofu to absorb the marinade for 10-20 minutes.

With the tofu still in the dish being marinated, cube the tofu to about the size of a ping pong ball.

Pour roughly half of a box of corn starch into a bowl.

Coat tofu heavily with cornstarch by mixing cubes into the cornstarch. You'll probably need to do 2 or 3 batches to coat all the cubes evenly.

Heat oil to a medium temperature.

Put corn starch coated tofu into oil. Allow tofu to brown to a golden color on one side and flip. Allow it to fry on the other side.

Done! Experiment with different sauces and sides to go with this tofu. It makes great wraps!