Sweet and Sour Tofu Balls
2 (14 ounce) blocks firm tofu, squeezed and crumbled
1 (6 ounce) can water chestnuts, chopped
3 green onions, minced
1/2 cup parsley, minced
drop soy sauce
pepper, to taste
oil, as needed for frying
flour, as needed for dusting
2 cups vinegar
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup ketchup
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 teaspoons fresh ginger, grated
1. Add tofu to water chestnuts, green onions, and parsley. Add soy sauce and crushed black pepper. Mush together. Put oil in a deep bottomed pan and heat.
2. Roll tofu mix into balls and roll in flour. Fry until golden and place on paper towels to drain. Meanwhile, combine the vinegar and vegan sugar in saucepan and heat until dissolved (stinky here).
3. Add the remaining ingredients. Once sauce ingrediants are all mixed up and heated, throw the balls in, simmer for a while to heat.
Serve 4 or more balls per person. Over rice this stuff is filling and a bit fattening too, but it's yummy!
SO HOW'D IT GO?
I've made a sort of different version of the above recipie and to make it easier, we use some peanut butter to bind it and instead of frying or deep frying, we bake it in an oven at 350 degrees ...not sure how long but until it browns then turn occasionally.
It is easy to see how they don't stick - there's nothing to bond the ingredients! You have a lot of basically dry stuff you're throwing together.
I was able to bind the balls easily by adding these two ingredients:
2 tbsp. cornstarch in a little over enough water to dissolve it;
2 tbsp. egg replacer in a little over enough water to dissolve (about 1/2 cup liquid or less for the both)
Mix it in after you have all the ingredients together. You can make the balls easily this way. One tip though, if you get more than a tiny bit of flour on your fingers, then rinse your hands of it, because it will make it harder to bond the balls.
Doing this I had no problem with keeping the balls together.
I did not make the sauce because I have access to a vegan sweet and sour sauce from my grocer, but as far as the balls go, they were pretty good. The water chestnuts weren't all that good in it and the recipe could use some tweaking (such as adding ginger) but overall it was good and I might make it again. :)
Oh this was just yummy! the tofu would NOT stay into shape, so i just cooked it by frying it in the pan. i first put rice on a plate then mixed the sauce with the tofu mixture and placed that on top of the rice. Thank you for makeing this recipe avalible to others. My mom(who doesnt like tofu much, licked the plate clean!) This will def. go in my cooking note book. ;D