How to Stir Fry Tofu

"So, the first thing you want to do before you can stir-fry the tofu cubes is you have to drain it and you have to press it because tofu is packed in water and it has a lot of water in it and if you don't press it first it's going to take you forever to stir-fry the cubes. So, I have a pound of organic tofu. Oops, that's why cooking is fun, especially fun if you can get somebody to clean up afterwards. But anyway, you want to use the water packed in this recipe. They have tofu that comes in aseptic packages, which is absolutely great in things like puddings and mousses and desserts, but for a savory recipe and for a stir-fry, you want to use the firm or the extra firm packed in water. First thing you have to do is you need to drain the water out of it. You're going to get a big block just like this which would be a little hard to sauté. So, what I'm going to do is I'm going to cut it in the size of pieces I want it, bite size. So, maybe in about thirds, look good to me. You want to try to get the cubes as even as possible so that they will brown as evenly as possible. I cut that big block in thirds. Now, I'm just going to try to get the cubes as even as possible. What I really need to do is get the moisture out of this. So, what I have here are some paper plates that I've lined with paper towels. I'm going to put them on the paper towels. For this much I need about two plates so I'm going to use half on what plate and half on the other. On top of that is going to go another set of paper towels, another plate, more paper towels, the other half of the tofu, and you certainly could cube this afterwards if you wanted to just do the slabs. If you were perhaps going to bake it or grill it or something, you wanted to get the water off that way. More paper towels, I have about four here. You will need to change these every so often. You'll know when it's ready by when the paper towels no longer get wet. Then I'm going to put another plate on top to weight it down. I found that just taking my good old teapot, filling it with water, putting it on top, provides the perfect amount of weight to press it down. Then, we're going to have to go back to this in a few minutes. Check the paper towels. When they get wet, we'll probably have to change it maybe one or two more times depending on how wet this tofu is. But, it's really important that you don't skip this step. Once, I tried to take a short-cut and it took like an hour to stir-fry the cubes."