Tempeh, Part II

Well, I'm munching on my first home-made batch of tempeh right now! It turned out to be not terribly difficult to make, and the flavor is good - very mild. I cut half of one of the slabs into "fingers" and deep fried it in a bit of canola oil. Half of it was briefly soaked in chicken bullion before frying, the other half was fried without any treatment and lightly salted. I think the soaked came out better - the bit of extra flavor is nice and the extra moisture seems to have made them a bit more tender inside.

So far I've munched on it plain, with a dip of soy and ginger, and dipped into some Thai peanut salad dressing I like to make. It's good with all of them, but I think I like it with the Thai peanut best. I'm also thinking they would be good lightly breaded with a spicy breading before cooking. I still have 3/4 of the batch I just made, so I will try it in different dishes over the next few days and pick out my favorites. I think the bullion soaked and deep fried version would make a tasty wrap samich with lots of veggies and some spicy mustard...

All in all, another successful Mad Kitchen Scientist project! The hardest part of the whole thing was finding a nice warm - but not too warm - place for the inoculated soybean mush to incubate for 24 hours. After hunting all over the house, I found a nice warm spot on top of one of our fluorescent light fixtures in the sunroom. I actually had to put several layers of terry toweling above the "hot spot" to lower the temps a bit, but it worked like a champ.

If anyone is curious, here are some links to nutritional information on Tempeh:

Tempeh, on the WHFoods site.
Health Benefits of Tempeh.
The highest level of soy isoflavones is found in Tempeh.
Tempeh won't make you as gassy as other soy or bean products.

And, here are some recipes!
Recipes from Tempeh.info.
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