How To Prepare Tofu Before Adding It To Veggie Chili

Veggie chili is, naturally, heavy on the vegetables. A true vegetarian chili, on the other hand, has only veggies, with the addition of crumbled tofu being an easy way to add familiar textures and protein to it. Guy Vaknin, the owner and chef at City Roots Hospitality in New York City, spoke with us about the best way to prep the tofu for you chili. "Freeze and thaw it, press out all water, crumble, and add it in," he explains. "This breaks up the protein so the crumble absorbs the sauce and flavors."

Freezing your tofu is an easy hack to make it taste more like meat, but it's not just about how you prepare the tofu for your chili. Vaknin says it's also about the kind you use — extra firm being his preferred variety — and the spices and seasonings you add to it. Vaknin recommends using chili powder, smoked paprika, cumin, garlic powder, onion powder (or fresh chopped onion), and dried oregano. "Add the spices and seasoning in layers," he recommends, "not all at once, to enhance the flavor."

You can read up on Tasting Table's advice on how to correctly season your food in layers for an idea on how to do that. If you choose to season your tofu before you add it to your chili, Vaknin insists the best way to so is with a dry rub.

For Vaknin, the choice between marinade or dry rub is clear: "Dry rub, because using a marinade will not seep inside the tofu and hold the flavor." While it's true that tofu can be seasoned either way, there are instances when you'll want to opt for a dry rub over a wet marinade and vice versa. Extra steps like freezing and pressing the tofu will further aid in the absorption of flavors, as will tossing the tofu in the seasonings ahead of time and leaving it in the fridge overnight. But, using a dry rub is particularly advantageous because, in the time those dry spices are left on your crumbles, they'll pull even more moisture from them. That means that the tofu will not only be flavorful on its own, but it will be able to absorb even more taste when added to your veggie chili.

A dry rub won't just help with flavor, but with texture too. As mentioned above, the dry seasonings will work to pull any moisture left within your tofu after the pressing process, giving you a firmer, more meat-like texture. To further play with textures, you might consider adding some smashed mushrooms to your recipe or substitute half of the tofu with a high quality store-bought, meatless ground beef.