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Monday 18 February 2013

Tempeh cooking 101: Reengineered

Stir fry oil soaked tempeh & cabbage, tofu ... with corn, carrot, and lettuce. 

In my family, tempeh is normally cooked either deep fried or boiled (in gravy like curry). My favorite is of course deep fried, eaten with rice and sambal belacan. In my effort to reduce fat intake, I opted to stir frying instead of deep frying. I then realized how much oil is required to stir fry four by four square inches of tempeh, that is cut into small pieces. A couple of table spoons. Duh. That is 30 m of oil. Otherwise you get either burned tempeh, and if you added water early to prevent burning, you get soggy tempeh.


Grilled Tempeh, rice and veges of bitter gourd and carrot

Sometimes, my late mom did something out of ordinary, regarding tempeh cooking. One is by grilling it in open fire. I copied that by grilling in my toaster oven. It worked!!! She never added anything on the tenpeh. I sometime brushes some oil on it to get it crispier. Perhaps not necessary, next time will grill it longer. Soybean is already rich in oil. Yup, did all that food analysis way back in school in 1980. Man, that was so long ago.


Happy tempeh eating.

Alternative Foodie

4 comments:

  1. That's a great idea for cooking tempeh :) I always fry it and it always seems to end up soggy (probably because I don't add enough oil. Thanks for the tip :)

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    1. Edited: EK, you made it to my blog and be the first to make a comment. Historical! Thank you so much. Yes, I've to recall some more cooking method that my late mom employed, especially in the days when cooking oil was not as easily available as today - and there was no electrical oven too.

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    2. ooh man, I think this comment box has no edit feature ;)

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