This recipe comes to us from a grocery store impulse-buy. I see "Better Homes and Gardens Plant Based Recipes" and without even opening it, throw it on the conveyor belt. Only once I got home I discovered that the "110 All-Veg Recipes" often have dairy. I guess it's my fault - it doesn't actually say "vegan".
Anyways, there are a few vegan recipes in here and today's is found in this magazine. The "Hoisin-Glazed Tofu and Green Beans" recipe was accompanied by a beautiful photo and generally included ingredients I already had, so I decided to give it a shot.
Ingredients:
3 Tbsp water
2 Tbsp hoisin sauce
1 Tbsp soy sauce or tamari (I used soy)
1 Tbsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
2 Tbsp vegetable oil
16 oz extra-firm tofu (drained, pressed, cut into 1-inch pieces)
3 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
8 oz green beans
Cooked rice noodles
To assemble, combine the first 5 ingredients for the sauce. Set aside.
Heat 1Tbsp of the oil in a frying pan (medium high heat), and add the tofu. Fry one side for 5 min, flip and then fry the other side for 5 min. (Confession: I ate a piece at this stage and it was delicious).
Remove the tofu from the pan. Now heat the other Tbsp of oil, add the sliced garlic and then (after letting the garlic cook for 30 seconds) add the beans. Cook the beans and garlic together for a few minutes (3-5).
Then add the tofu back in and pour the sauce over everything. Let the sauce boil and get to your desired consistency.
Serve over hot cooked rice noodles.
A few notes...
*Do you have a tofu press yet? This is a crazy wonderful invention. After years of trying to press my tofu with paper towel and a frying pan, I found this amazing creation and will never go back. It presses the tofu in a few minutes and is dishwasher safe....fabulous.
*Rice noodles are an interesting beast. The method I find works best: Boil water. Take it off the heat. Drop in the rice noodles and wait 2-3 minutes. Drain the noodles. Return them to the pan with a little oil sprinkled in...toss them around and you won't have the gummy glue-like mess that sometimes happens with rice noodles.
Vegan Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ This is a good recipe with a good balance of protein, veg and starch. Pretty good flavor - I'm a fan of fried tofu in pretty much anything.
Simplicity Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ I had everything on hand and the whole recipe took no more than 30 min (even though the recipe said 40 min).
Carnivore Rating: ⭐⭐⭐ "The tofu's kind of nothing, and the sauce is bland."
Kid Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ "It's really good. Can I have more rice noodles?"
So, this satisfies the vegetarians/vegans but not a big hit with carnivores. I made this for lunch and it was a quick and easy recipe that was pretty low-maintenance. Will keep this on the list for busy times.
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