Viet World Kitchen

Tofu Coagulant Guide: What to buy and where to find it

My friend Bee Yinn Low posted a recipe on how to make sweet tofu pudding on her site, RasaMalaysia.com. She asked me to give tips on doing it well because she had a little trouble with her sweet doufu hua recipe. Among the comments that Bee received were ones about what to use for coagulating soy milk to produce tofu. People were very confused and I fielded their questions. Obviously, they didn’t have my book but more importantly, clarification is needed. So here we are.

To make tofu you need 3 ingredients: soybeans, water and coagulant. What are your coagulant options and how to choose and get them? I hope to answer your questions here.

What does a coagulant do to soy milk? It solidifies the protein and oil in hot soy milk. 

Can you use agar agar or gelatin to coagulate soy milk? No, unless you want to produce soy milk gelatin. “Almond tofu” is gelled with agar agar or unflavored gelatin but it’s more of a jelly than a tofu. The term tofu is often used in China and Japan to denote many jelled things. Tofu is really a different animal. It’s not thickened with a starch or gelatin type of ingredient.

What can be used to coagulate soy milk for tofu: Many things, from everyday vinegar, lemon juice, and recycled/fermented whey to gypsum (calcium sulphate), Epsom salts (magnesium sulfate), nigari (magnesium chloride), and glucono deltalactone (GDL).

Instant Pho Spice Cubes: How good are they?

A while back, I posted about instant pho kits and someone commented on how he loved a quick bowl made from the contents of the little boxes of pho bouillon sold at Vietnamese markets. I’d seen them but never went near them. They are typically stocked at the cash register or shelved in the spice aisle. Each box measures about 2 1/2 inches by 3/4 inch thick and there are many kinds to cover the most popular Viet dishes.

I took the plunge and got a box of “vien gia vi” (literally seasoning cube in Vietnamese). There are 4 cubes to a box and each one makes 2 servings. That’s a lot of flavor packed into each. Was the product good? Is it a viable pho shortcut?

Instant Pho Fixes? A tasting of Trader Joe’s, Pacific Foods and Happy Pho

One of the above bowls of pho was homemade and the other two were made from instant pho products. Guess which was which? I’ve written about packaged pho that I keep around for super quick pho fixes. They’re from Vietnam (see the Vifon sample in the photo below) and contain MSG. Nevertheless, they are quite serviceable when you want a bowl in say, 3 to 5 minutes. Not bad for about 50 cents at an Asian market.

Since that post, several other convenience pho products have become available. Pacific Foods, maker of boxed broths and soups, sent me their new chicken pho soup base. Trader Joe’s recently announced a frozen beef pho so I added that to my must-try list. I also found the Happy Pho kit in a box at Whole Foods.

It was too tempting. I had to check them all out – side by side with homemade chicken pho, which I made earlier this week. I already knew that the homemade would be better but my question was this:  Are there good instant or quick-an-easy pho products sold at mainstream markets that come close to the real thing?