Viva veganuary! 17 delicious ways with tofu – from thai red curry to chocolate mousse

O n 11 January 1770, Benjamin Franklin, then in London, wrote a letter to a friend in Philadelphia, enclosing some soya bean seeds (“Chinese garavances”, referring to garbanzos, or chick-peas) and forwarding a recipe for a type of cheese that could be derived from them, which he called “tau-fu”.

Franklin may never have actually tasted tofu, and certainly didn’t know much about making it, much less cooking with it. To some extent this ignorance persists in the west, where tofu is prized as a high-protein meat substitute, albeit one so bland that it is basically a texture awaiting a flavour. Tofu may be versatile, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we know what to do with it and, unless you’re a vegan, it can be hard to get excited about it. If that’s the case, here are 17 recipes to change your mind.

Tofu is produced in varying textural styles – soft, firm, extra firm – depending on how much water has been pressed out of the bean curd during manufacture. Most recipes specify which kind is required, and where they don’t it could be regarded as a matter of personal preference. “Silken tofu”, however, is a slightly different thing: it’s softer than regular tofu, doesn’t come packed in water, and has specialist applications. Don’t use it unless it’s called for – and don’t substitute regular tofu when silken is specified.

Mapo tofu – traditionally, “pockmarked old woman’s tofu” after its unfortunate Qing dynasty originator – is a dish that is said to please even those who don’t like tofu, so is probably a good place to start. Felicity Cloake’s perfect mapo tofu combines the best of several versions of this spicy Sichuan braise, and includes a bit of either pork or beef mince. If you’re cooking with tofu to avoid meat, try Fuchsia Dunlop’s vegetarian version.

Over the years, Meera Sodha has furnished Guardian readers with dozens of recipes for vegan tofu dishes. Here are just three. Her Thai red curry combines baked aubergine with cubed, fried tofu and rainbow chard. The “brazenly addictive” chilli tofu is an Indo-Chinese street food, but with some rice it could also be supper. Sodha’s fried tofu with tomato sambal and spinach offers the option of using a good shop-bought sambal, making it a near-instantaneous evening meal.

One of the tricks of working with tofu is not to work too hard. It doesn’t need a lot of cooking, and it tends to fall apart under the stress of heat and stirring. If you’re making Yotam Ottolenghi’s silken tofu caponata, you don’t have to cook it at all. For this adventurous fusion of Sichuan and Italian cuisines – “A union so wrong, it’s right,” Ottolenghi says – the tofu is simply sliced and served alongside a caponata of aubergine, celery, tomato, raisins, soy sauce, pine nuts, onions, ginger and rice wine.

Tofu also makes a very good tempura ingredient, suited as it is to undisturbed deep frying. All you really need is some hot oil and a simple, light batter – this one contains nothing but flour, bicarbonate of soda and ice water.

In Nigel Slater’s stir-fry with pak choi and mushrooms, the tofu is marinated first and cooked separately at the end. Tofu steaks can be given a more meat-like texture by freezing the tofu and then defrosting it in a sieve – that way you don’t have to press it down to remove any excess water. For Sesame-crusted tofu, the bean-curd is dipped in egg, coated in cornflour and sesame seeds, gently fried and served over a gingery noodle stir-fry.

Sometimes tofu’s tendency to fall apart can be a virtue. For Ottolenghi’s fiery breakfast of scrambled tofu with avocado and cucumber salad, he uses silken tofu and goes at it with a potato masher until it resembles scrambled eggs. Anna Jones’s carrot burger combines crumbled tofu with breadcrumbs and roasted carrot to create a veggie burger that is rather more than the sum of its parts.

I mentioned that silken tofu had specialist applications. One of those is as a pudding ingredient. Its custard-like consistency – and the fact that it doesn’t taste of much – make it the key to a number of vegan desserts. It also simplifies the process considerably, not sharing the tendency for milk, eggs and cream to behave temperamentally. Jamie Oliver makes a version of chocolate mousse with silken tofu, but if you’ve only got ordinary firm tofu on hand, you can also have a go at this chocolate mousse recipe from John Quilter. Meanwhile, Tamal Ray uses silken tofu in a white chocolate and lemon pudding that is so easy it almost takes longer to describe than it does to make: vegan white chocolate, melted in a microwave, is combined with tofu, golden syrup and lemon juice and zest, then blitzed smooth in a food processor, poured into ramekins and chilled in the fridge.

Kim-Joy’s lemon and rose tofu cheesecake is another of these easy, if unlikely puddings, which she offers in both a dairy and vegan version – the silken tofu is a straight swap for the same amount of cream cheese.

Finally, silken tofu can add an important textural element to a vegan fruit smoothie, in place of milk or yoghurt. The exact measurements for this sort of thing are usually a matter of personal idiosyncrasy – I’m not sure I would drink a smoothie I didn’t make myself – but this recipe for a blueberry tofu smoothie from The Spruce Eats will give you a rough idea of the proportions. The best that can be said about it is that you would never know it was full of tofu.