From http://www.primalmommy.com
High fired stoneware, dishwasher safe. 6" handle to handle and 3.5" deep. Presser lid glazed on one side, unglazed on the other.
$35 plus $8 shipping
TOFU PRESS
SOLD
Make your own soy milk and use it to make your own tofu!
Here's how I do it:
First, get yourself some of the sheer synthetic fabric like sheer curtains are made of. You can use a jelly or wine maker's straining bag, but sheer curtains have a finer mesh and can be tossed in the washing machine. I hemmed mine, about two feet square, just to keep it from unraveling.
Buy some bulk dry soybeans, and pull out a large non-aluminum canning kettle. If you have a big one and a bigger one, better yet -- but you can make do with whatever you have. You'll need a big colander or strainer, as well.
The night before:
Weigh out a pound of soybeans in a big bowl and cover with cold water to soak. Remember they will swell, so use a nice big bowl!
Then, in the morning:
Drain the soybeans and rinse them. At this point I take my big enamelled stew pot and spray a little nonstick coating around the inside of it and wipe it out. This makes for an easier cleanup. I put a bigger canning kettle on the stove with a trivet in the bottom, or three or four metal canning jar rings, or whatever's handy -- then set the stew pot down inside the bigger pot, effectively making an enormous double-boiler and keeping the bottom of the inner pot from getting too hot. Turn on the burner while you do the next step.
Put a cup of beans and about two cups of water into your blender (or food processor, or whatever does your grinding) and process a good long time, until it makes kind of a bean glop. (The finer the better.) Then dump the glop into the pot. Don't worry too much about exact measurements -- you can rinse the blender with a little water and dump it in. If you have a good blender like a Kitchenaid, you shouldn't have any problem, but feel your blender between cups and make sure it's not overheating.
When all the beans are ground and dumped into the pot, put a lid on it and cook it for a while. Get it boiling/bubbling, then turn it down to simmer. Soy protein is indigestible unless cooked, so don't rush this process. I give it a stir once in a while with a long spatula but otherwise just leave it to steam and heat for half an hour or so.
Straining:
Put another BIG pot or bowl in the sink, with a colander or strainer on top. The next step is to strain the soy milk you've just made to get the pulp out. I line my regular colander with the sheer fabric, or use it in a fine mesh screening strainer that will sit on the rim of the pot. Pour the hot glop (careful!) into the strainer, so that the milk passes through and is collected in the pot/bowl beneath it.
Pour another 10 or 12 cups of cold water through the pulp, one or two at a time, gathering up the edges of the fabric between cups to squeeze the last of the soy milk out. What is left when the liquid stops running white is called Okara. You can throw it out, but it can also be used in bread, dried and added to hot cereal, etc. (Check out The Tofu Cookbook by Cathy Bauer and Joel Andersen for recipes.)
Rinse your cooking pot, re-oil it, and pour the strained soy milk back into it. Heat it to boiling again.
You have just made soymilk! Now to make tofu:
Fill a two cup measure with warm water and stir in two tablespoons of Epsom salts. There are other solidifiers you can use as well, including sea water, but Epsom salts work really well, and most peoplehave some under the sink somewhere.
Now: lift the lid on your hot soymilk, and pour in about half the Epsom salt solution while stirring it with a long handled spoon. Wait a minute or two and stir again -- is the liquid starting to separate, and look curdled? Add more salt water if it isn't. Before long you should see it starting to separate into 'curds' and yellowish 'whey'. The bigger the curds, the more firm the tofu will be.
Now you need the tofu press:
A quick side note: you obviously don't have to buy an arty stoneware primalpotter tofu press to do this. My first one was a square plastic tupperware-ish container that I melted rows of holes in with a hot metal skewer. You can use a colander but it makes kind of a round tofu blob which is harder to slice. Again, see The Tofu Cookbook for ideas for making a press.
Line the tofu press with the (rinsed clean) sheer fabric. Pour the curdled milk into the press. The yellow whey will run through and down the drain (some save it, see the book for details.) Fold the fabric across the top of the curds, put the presser lid on it, and weight it down with a big can, a clean stone, or something that weighs about a pound. Leave it for about half an hour. Store it in water -- like in a ziploc bag of water, or in a storage container. Change the water every couple days, but the tofu should be fresh for a week or so.
Clean up is a big project for that smallish chunk of tofu -- so I always make a double batch!