Have you wondered how you can make your own super simple tofu at home? It’s a question a number of people have been asking because each little pack comes in single-use plastic. In this clip I show you the silken chick pea tofu I have made using just two ingredients – chickpeas and water – and tell how how I made it.

Knowing how to do this is pretty liberating – especially knowing that you can use any dried legume on your shelf. Enjoy and please share freely.

To learn more about growing a permaculture garden simply and easily, check out our course The Incredible Edible Garden and learn how to design your own permaculture landscape in our Permaculture Design Course.

Transcript:

Hi! Welcome back to another live about ways that we can reduce plastic. It’s plastic free July. Hi! I’m Morag Gamble, from our Permaculture Life and the Permaculture Education Institute. 

Now every day in my garden or in my home, I’m talking about some simple way that we can actually really get rid of some of those single-use plastics that enter in our lives, and some of the things that we find challenging. So today I’m responding to a question that someone sent in, about what do you do about vegetarian proteins? They rely on things like tempeh and tofu they were saying, and just find it really hard to get rid of those plastic wrapped tofu blocks. Now what else can you do? Well, there’s a whole lot of things you can do and it’s surprisingly easy to make tofu at home. And particularly tofu that you know, not a serious soy-based one as well. So I’ve got one here that I wanted to tell you about how to make it. I can’t really do that in five minutes, not make it and show you. I might make a separate film about it, but I’ll describe it and I’ll show you what it looks like. So this is chickpea tofu, and it was the most simplest thing whatsoever. Now, believe it or not, you can actually use many of the beans that you would have in your own pantry. You can use any sort of cannellini bean, you can use even some of those darker beans as well. But they make a tofu look quite different that way. So anyway what did I do, I soaked the chickpeas overnight.  Then, in the morning I cook them up for just 20 minutes until they’re worse off. And then I put them into a blender with some water and made a milk a little bit like when I made that, then that milk. So I just made it into a slurry and then poured that slurry into a cheesecloth or a cheese bag. Now, normally I have this beautiful organic cheesecloth that I put everything through. But I’ve hardly been out in this pandemic time and most of my cheesecloth is kind of finished. So I went outside, and I found one of those bags that you put around fruits to stop fruit fly coming, you know. And I thought, well that looks pretty good. So I’ve used one of those, I poured the jug of blended up chickpeas and water through this. And collected the liquid below and squeezed, and squeezed and squeezed. Until all the liquid was out, and I was left with this pulp here. Which is basically just the chickpea pulp and then the liquid that came out. Is what I then put into a saucepan, and just boiled that up for about 15 minutes. Stirring every now and then, until it became kind of like a custard consistency. Now you don’t have to throw this away, although because it’s a raw product. 

So it’s really just soaked and ground-up chickpeas you really need to cook this before you can eat it. So you can add it into a stir fry, you could mix it in with something, like a chickpea patty. A veggie burger type of thing. You can add it into baking cakes, or muffins or biscuits. So this is a really valuable product, a high-protein product. So don’t chuck it. You know, I’ve actually seen a number of recipes for these sorts of things. Where you say, you know just throw this part away. No, this is really useful and valuable food as well. So it’s going to put that aside now because that’s not the bit that we’re talking about. So the liquid that I drained off through the bag went into the bowl. I put that into a saucepan, boiled it up for about 15 minutes. Until it became kind of goopy and you may need to do it a little bit longer depending on how much liquid you put in. But it just kind of starts to come together like I said, a custard consistency and then well it’s like that. So when you put your spoon in and it comes up and just sort of sticks a bit, peaks a bit on it then I pour it into a mold. Now you don’t need any special mold, this was just a kind of a glass jar I had in the cupboard. You could put it into a bowl, whatever you can find nothing fancy required for this. And you might have noticed there was nothing else I added that was just chickpeas and water. Nothing else that’s it, and then you also might have noticed that I had a bit of a nibble beforehand so excuse the haggard look on that. So I’m just gonna see if I can put the plate on that. And release it, beautiful! And there it is chickpea tofu. There must be a name for that I’m sure there is anyway. And then you can slice it like you would a tofu, and you can use it for all sorts of things that you would like. Look at that, that’s wonderful! So you can eat it just like that, or you can cook it up or you can mix it with all sorts of things. And so like most tofus, it doesn’t really have much of a flavor in and of itself. But once you add it to cooking, then it certainly does. Now you could also get quite fancy with this and start to add other things in with your mix. 

Like I said, it was just chickpeas and water. You might like to add different sorts of spices in with this as well. And maybe, even a blend of different sorts of beans and peas and all sorts of things. There’s no limit to your creativity and what this means it’s you never have to buy one of those little packages of tofu again. Which you know, if you’re looking for the organic ones they can be quite expensive as well. And this literally took me, you know soak the beans, cook them up. You know, like soaking it, it doesn’t take any effort. You just put the water in a jar with the beans in it and leave it overnight. In the morning, stick it on the stove and it can do its thing until they’re cooked. And then all it requires is just to watch a little bit during 15 minutes, that’s it. So it’s super easy, these things aren’t really that fussy at all. So I hope you’ve enjoyed that, and maybe see as much as I do that this is a liberating thing when you discovered this. When I first discovered this, I just couldn’t believe it. So I hope you give it a try, I will make a full film showing the whole process at some point. But I’m sure if you google chickpea tofu, you’ll find other ways to do it to other films. I mean, that will show you the process – you need a bit more help, all right? Well down below I’ve got a couple of links to my youtube channel and my blog. There’s over 400 articles there recipes all sorts of things to help you in a simple life as well. Well over 150 films and also some links there too to my online permaculture course. The introduction went to permaculture gardening, one the incredible edible garden and the permaculture educators program. If you’re looking for something that’s actually going to give you an opportunity to take, permaculture maybe, make it not only in life but your livelihood too. 

So it includes the permaculture design course, permaculture teachers course. As well as some business modules, and put a link to my four part series, about permaculture, that’s a free series that you’re very welcome to watch. And make sure that you share this link, because I really want everyone to know about how easy it is to make your own homemade tofu. With any kind of beans that you’ve got in your cupboard. All right, take care, stay safe and I’ll catch you tomorrow. Bye!