Fried Tofu "Cutlets"

This is actually Katie, but I just added John as an author!

Anyway, we made these tofu "cutlet" things cause one of John's comfort foods is chicken cutlets.

Here are the ingredients:
1 pound of extra firm tofu, cut into cutlet shapes.
1 egg
olive oil
1 cup panko breadcrumbs
1/4 cup flour
dash salt
1 cube vegetable bullion and water / vegetable stock or broth
1 tsp. onion powder
1/4 tsp. oregano
1/2 tsp. paprika
dash black pepper

We recommend freezing the tofu two or three days beforehand and thawing it in the fridge for a day. This gives the tofu a meatier texture.

Regardless, you have to drain the tofu. To do this, put some paper towels on a plate and put the tofu on top. Then put a few paper towels on top and weigh the tofu down with another plate and more weight. Let it sit for 1/2 hour. If you don't do this, the tofu will not absorb the flavor of the marinade, and it will not taste like anything.

Meanwhile, get 2 cups of water and boil it. Then, add the bullion cube. Once the cube is dissolved, take the broth off the heat and let it cool.


When the tofu is done draining, put it in the broth and let it marinate for at least 1/2 hour.
While that's marinating and stuff, you can make the breading. Just dump the panko, flour, paprika, salt, pepper, oregano and onion powder in a bowl...

...and mix it with a fork or whisk to evenly distribute everything.


Next, crack an egg into a good-sized bowl and whisk it.
When the tofu's all good and marinated, get your dipping/frying set up like this:

We dumped out the broth too, you don't want to use that stuff afterwards.

And heat some oil up in a frying pan. We used olive oil, cause that's what John had and we forgot to get vegetable oil, but we highly recommend using a vegetable oil because the flash point on those is higher and you won't get little bits of really hot olive oil jumping up at you.


Then, take a tofu cutlet, and coat it with egg.

And then coat it VERY well with the breadcrumb mixture.

Then, repeat the process for each cutlet. When they're all done, place two cutlets in the hot oil, CAREFULLY.

You only want two in there at once, because otherwise the oil will get too cool and it'll be harder to turn and handle the tofu. When one side is golden brown, flip it.

Mmmmmmm....

When each side is nicely fried, maybe 3-5-ish minutes on each side, place the cutlets on some paper towels to drain.


And serve! We served ours with mashed potatoes and this great recipe for vegetarian brown gravy. Also, adding a bit of gralic salt on top is a great idea if you find it not quite salty enough.


It really was wonderful. Great vegetarian comfort food.