Let's make Money from Making Tofu.

Tofu or bean curd, as its name refers, is healthful food made of soy milk, which is low in calorie and fat but rich in protein and other minerals like calcium and magnesium. Some research also discloses that tofu has the ability to decrease cholesterol and minimize the risk of heart disease.

This fact has made tofu become very popular food around the world. Tofu has its specialty in combining health and economic potentials.

Tools :

A big jar

Grinder

Unbleached cloth/cheesecloth for strainer

Cooking pan

Materials :

Soybean

Cider Vinegar, or Lemon juice for coagulant

Water

Soy bean used as the material in tofu making should be of good quality and free from any unwanted materials like small stones, plastic, etc. Wash the beans, then soak in water for around 6-8 hours.

Wash the bean again, and put it in a wooden/plastic jar .

Using bean grinder, grind the bean and let the soya paste flow into a container under the grinder.

Move the ground bean into a big pan then add some hot water to dilute it and mix thoroughly.

Cook and boil it for about 15-20 minutes since it starts boiling, don't stop stirring during the cooking since there is a tendency to scorch.

et ready with a clean barrel and a piece of unbleached, porous cotton cloth.

Put the porous cotton cloth on top of the barrel so that the whole mouth of the barrel is covered by the cotton cloth. Bind it with a rope around the barrel so that the cotton cloth won't lose.

Now let's begin with filtration.

Slowly pour the content in the barrel through the cotton filter, shake the base of the cotton to help the filtration flows down more rapidly. You can see white, milky liquid flows down during filtration. Rinse the residue/remains with boiled water to cleanse the retained milk in the residue, do the rinsing several times if necessary. The soy milk will be totally filtrated when you see the rinsing water has become light white or clear water.

Don't throw the residue away, it still contains nutrition which is good for your livestock food.

After filtration is completed, you need to coagulate the filtrate. There are several coagulants we can use, some are readily found coagulants like vinegar and lemon juice.

Put vinegar or lemon juice in the glass up to 1/4 part of the volume. Add water to make the volume becomes one glass and stir.

Put the pan with soy milk in it on the stove and boil it back. When the soy milk boils, turn the stove off and remove the pan to the table (don't forget to put heat resisting mat under the pan). Pour half a volume of the coagulant into boiled soy milk and stir in one direction.

Put a lid on the pan after stirring and let it sit for around 5 minutes. Check the soy milk after 5 minutes, now there should be some thin pieces of tofu curds in the liquid. If there is no curds as the result of coagulation yet, add more coagulant into the soy milk, but this time no stirring is needed. Put the lid on again and let it sit for another 5 minutes. Repeat the above process if the coagulation is not complete.

After the coagulation is complete, now we need to separate the curds from the whey to form them into pieces of tofu. Use a piece of cheese cloth as the strainer.

There are two ways of forming tofu : you can use a large cast (sieve-like container) to form a large single tofu then you cut it into small pieces, or you can use small containers/casts and form every single tofu in those casts.

Lay a piece of cheese cloth on a cast with 3-5 cm height. The cloth should cover the whole edge as well as the bottom of the cast so that the curd won't flow out of the cast. Pour the curd into the cast and wrap it with the cloth by making a knot of the cheese cloth corners. Let it cool down and toughen.

Unwrap the cheese cloth and tofu is ready for packaging or next treatment (coloring, cooking,etc).

A lot of customers like color tofu instead of the white, plain one. Tofu makers in Indonesia use turmeric to color tofu.

Boil water in a large pan. While waiting for the water to boil, prepare turmeric extract by blending some turmeric with water using a blender.

Another benefit of this coloring that it also helps preserve the tofu.

Sieve the blended turmeric and put the extract into the boiling water in the large pan, stir the water for some minutes.

Soak white tofu into the coloring water one by one and let it sit inside for 15 minutes. Remove the tofu and put it back on trays when the immersing is done.

Packaging will make the product of tofu look more attractive, hygienic, and more long lasting.

The cover can be made transparent so that customers can identify kinds of tofu without opening it since the more often the package is opened the more chances of contamination will take place.

Putting tags on the cover informing about price and expiry date, contents and nutrition facts are also important.