Thai Take Out, Straight from Your Kitchen

After logging yet another 12 hour day in the lab, the last thing that I wanted to do was cook.  I spent the last few hours of my work day dreaming of ordering glorious take out boxes stuffed with delicious treats.  But then I remembered that Christmas is somehow only 5 short weeks away (yes really) and that I need to hang on to every last penny in my pocketbook so that I don't have to deny my loved ones or myself of a fabulous holiday break.

Cut to the following recipe - Thai style fried tofu that literally takes fewer than 10 minutes of active cooking time from start to finish.  Throw a couple of pre-made dipping sauces and some microwaveable rice in your grocery basket, and you've got yourself a complete meal with minimal time spent in the kitchen and some change left over in your wallet.

Thai Style Fried Tofu

1 block extra firm tofu
1 cup vegetable oil

Serve with:

store bought dipping sauces
pre-cooked microwaveable rice

Before you fry the tofu, you'll want to remove excess liquid.  To get started, cut tofu package open and drain the liquid from the packaging:

Place drained tofu block in a shallow dish:

Fold a paper towel and place on top of tofu:

Place a heavy bowl on top of the paper towel:

Within a minute or so you should start to see liquid seeping out of the tofu, like so:

Let tofu sit with paper towel and bowl on top for 20 to 30 minutes, by which time a lot of liquid should have escaped the tofu and it should be ready to fry:

Heat 1 cup vegetable oil in a deep frying pan over medium heat until almost smoking.  You can test whether the oil is ready by dropping a small piece of tofu in and seeing what happens.  If small bubbles rapidly form around the tofu and it floats to the surface, you will know that the oil is hot enough for frying:

Cut the tofu block into cubes:

And place in the pan with the hot oil (if you have a deep fryer, it would work well for this recipe too).  After about 2 minutes, turn the tofu cubes to ensure that they brown on all sides.:

After the tofu has thoroughly browned on all sides, remove the tofu from the pan and drain on a paper towel to remove excess oil:

Serve with store bought dipping sauces (I used Thai peanut sauce and Thai sweet chili sauce):

and steamed rice (I found this pre-cooked rice in the freezer section which only requires 3 minutes of microwaving to heat up):

Enjoy!