I just thought it might be fun to chat generally about making these proteins from scratch, and hear what people's experiences are with it.
Tofu:
I've been watching Will It Tofu videos lately and it inspired me to make some pumfu from scratch because it's a bit cheaper that way and you also get the byproducts which can be reused too.
It's really fun to do because watching the milk separate into curds feels like mad science or witchy or something. It really turned out great, except I only got about 2/3rds the amount of pumfu out of process as they said I should. The only thing I can think of is maybe I didn't blend it well enough, so I'm going to try some tricks to blend it better next time.
Anyway, you get 3 products from it:
- Tofu - pumpkin seed tofu is so good, it's just expensive. It's just fattier than soy, so it really lends it to sausage-like preparations. I spice it like chorizo, pan fry it as a crumble and serve it over a tostada with black bean refritos and some veggies. I try not to overpower the flavor of the pumfu itself. It's killer.
- Okara - This is the pulp leftover when you squeeze out the nutmilk. You can find recipes for it. A lot of people bulk out baking recipes with it. I combined it with a mashed potato and veggies and made a potato/okara pancake with it and dressed it with some thai chili sauce. The nuttiness of the pumpkin seed really came through, and it's really good. I'll need to add a bit of binder next time though, because it was pretty fragile. I've also heard you can rehydrate the okara, add nootch, and have a nice ricotta replacement, and tasting the raw okara, that makes sense. I may try it.
- Whey - This is leftover when you press the curds into tofu. This makes a nice broth, and it added some depth to my instant ramen.
Seitan:
I've been making this from scratch for years. It's pretty easy.
I've tried both the "wash out" method where you wash the starch out of whole flour, and the method where you just start with gluten flour. I don't feel like the final product benefits much from the extra work of washing it out, so I just do it lazy-style.
There's lots of recipes out there for different mix-ins and different methods to cook. Personally, I like a very chewy, spongy, fluffy seitan, so I don't mix-in any other flours and then I boil it unwrapped in small pieces so it can fluff out a bit. Then I'll just do other prep from there. I love a nice fried buffalo seitan "wing."
I find that adding other flours (chickpea is common) makes a final product that's more like tofurky. That has it's place, but I'm a bit of a sicko and want the spongy stuff.
Tempeh:
I never made this from scratch, but if anyone has, I'd love to hear your experiences.
Has anyone out there experimented with this stuff? Going forward I'm definitely going to be pressing more weird tofus. I accidentally got too many red lentils a while back, so that's probably going to be my next tofu.
Ballpark, in the US? Everything goes right, $5 for 370g (12oz+). That much pumfu is easily as (or more) filling than a typical 16oz soy tofu block.
You can order 5lbs of seeds from a non-Amazon bulk-seller for like $25 after shipping/tax. 1 pound of seed yields that 12oz of pumfu per multiple sources (mine was a bit less, but I needed to blend better). You can get even cheaper, if you wanted to do massive quantities of seeds, but I doubt any home cook would. 5lbs of seed from Amazon only goes as low as $30, so that's not the way to go.
Pumfu in the store costs $7 for 8oz, so you're talking $10.50 for the same amount. So you save 50% making it yourself, and if you use the okara (pulp), you can squeeze more value out of it. I was worried that the okara would be a bit of bullshit no-waste filler ingredient, but I was wrong. It has a legit nuttiness that comes out when cooked, and a nice "milkiness" when uncooked (but a bit grainy).
I've never seen that braiding technique for seitan. I'm 100% going to try that next time, because I always like a good tweak.
eesh, $6/lb is still a lot for a homemade staple. I eat a lot of seitan and take about a year and a half to go through a 50lb bag of gluten, but I think seeds would go rancid in that quantity / time. I might try it as a treat eventually though. When I first saw non-soybean tofus in the store I assumed they were for Whole Foods suburbanites scared of soy turning them gay, this is the first time I've heard that they actually have some advantages
Oh for sure, it's not an every day food. It's a treat. Because it's a bit heavier, I doubt I'd want it more than once a week. But yeah, I got two meals out of it between the okara and pumfu, with the pumfu one being kinda decadent. But as far as economics go, nothing's ever gonna beat gluten flour or dried whole beans.
But absolutely you'd have to watch out for rancidity with seeds. That's why I said it's probably not worth getting more than a 5lb bag, unless you have a chest freezer and are going to be freezing the seeds to preserve, at which point you're just paying back your bulk savings with the electric bill.
The two types of non-soy tofu I see at wholefoods are pumfu, which we've discussed, and chickpea tofu. The chickpea tofu, I believe is usually Burmese Tofu. Which if you haven't had that, it's suuuper different. It's somewhere between polenta and tofu. It's starchy because they use whole chickpea flour, not separated curds. BUT if you like that, it's extremely easy and economical to make at home, because you just stir water and chickpea flour (aka gram flour or besan) in a pot until it congeals, then let it set in the fridge.
You can make chickpea tofu that's more like what soy tofu is, but I don't think that's what you usually find in the market.