tofu teriyaki

Meal: tofu teriyaki
Active preparation time: under 30 minutes
Approximate cost per serving (3 servings total): I’m not sure; the sauce ingredients were all purchased ages ago. The tofu was $1.59 for a pound of organic. The rice was a $1 a pound for organic brown rice, and we might have used a quarter of a pound. This was a pretty cheap meal.
Leftovers: 1 serving
Local ingredients: honey
Organic ingredients: tofu, rice, garlic

Last night was scheduled to be salad; however, we never got to the store this week to get greens (and other stuff too; I’m out of fruit, and this is no good), and we used the rest of the head of lettuce that we had with the side salads on Tuesday. So, I cast about in the kitchen to see what else we had. Fortunately, we had picked up an extra block of tofu on Sunday, and we had brown rice and the stuff for teriyaki sauce, so tofu teriyaki and brown rice it was.

Our teriyaki sauce recipe comes from here. I usually make one cup for one pound of protein. As long as your proportions are 1:1:1 for the honey, soy sauce, and rice wine, you’ll be fine. Add as much garlic and ginger as you can stand. If have the great fortune of living near an Asian grocery, go buy the ingredients there. You’ll get much better for much cheaper than you will at a normal grocery. Also, if you don’t normally cook this sort of thing, and thus, will only use the ingredients to make teriyaki sauce, the ingredients will last forever. I’m working off of a year old bottle of rice wine. So while it’s a slight initial investment, it’s worth it.

I mixed up the sauce (measuring a little oil, or something else slick, in your measuring cup first, will help the honey not stick) (also, heating the sauce briefly in the microwave - for a minute or so - will help the honey combine with everything else), sliced up the tofu, and set it to marinate about 3:00pm yesterday, but it would be even better if this was mixed up and set to marinate in the morning before one went to work. About 40 minutes before we were ready to eat, I put a cup of brown rice and three cups of water in the rice cooker. About 10 minutes before the rice was ready, I heated up the George Foreman, and cooked the tofu on it for about 7 minutes. (This would also work just fine with baking the tofu - I’d guess 10 to 15 minutes at 350, until it starts to brown, or in a skillet over medium heat until it starts to brown. However, the George Foreman made it dead easy.) While the tofu was cooking, I brought the remaining marinade to a boil in a saucepan. We served the tofu over rice with the remaining marinade as sauce. It was very, very good. :)