Local soybeans are on their way to become House Foods organic tofu, and I got to learn all about it

Erin Sommers

Rarely have I been so qualified for an assignment as I was last week.

I got an email June 8 from a marketing guy in Des Moines. Would I be interested in visiting several farms near Havelock, owned and farmed by the Hopkins family, while representatives of the House Foods group took a tour?

House Foods, he added, was a Los Angeles company, with Japanese owners, that makes tofu.

This was my moment.

As of writing this, I have four, one-pound blocks of extra firm tofu in my fridge.

My oldest child used to sneak into the fridge to pull out two-pound blocks of tofu and just devour them when he was a toddler. Maybe plain, maybe with soy sauce. Once with ketchup, which honestly I’m kind of embarrassed to admit.

Even before I married Tad, who has been a vegetarian since he was about 8, I liked tofu. A college friend made it once or twice, I liked what she did with it, and then I started learning how to prepare it myself.

My kids have all grown up eating tofu and I often describe it as a perfect toddler food. It’s soft and hard to choke on, it doesn’t really have a flavor of its own and it will pick up any flavor you put on it.

When we moved to Iowa in 2014, I used to joke about how we were surrounded by soybeans, but none that I knew of were going to tofu. But not anymore! Now I know where there are organic soybeans being grown that travel to California (presumably) to become the tofu that we can all buy at the grocery store.

I learned a lot about organic farming and about what the Hopkins family is doing in the county. You can read about that in the Pocahontas Record-Democrat.

Here’s what else I want you to know: Tofu is a great protein option to keep on hand. Go find yourself some House Foods organic extra firm tofu (so that you could possibly get some soybeans in there from Pocahontas County) and make yourself a BBQ tofu sandwich.

First you need to drain the water from the tofu and slice it about half an inch thick. You can then wrap the slices in paper towels and microwave them a minute each, to remove some of the extra water.

Slice and saute some onions. Caramelize them if you’re fancy and you have time. Push those to the side and, with your preferred oil or spray, pan fry the tofu slices until they’re a little crispy. Alternatively, pop them in a 400 degree oven (putting them on parchment paper will keep them from sticking) and cook about 10 minutes, flip, and another 5-10 minutes, until the edges are crispy. Put a slice of cheese on the tofu to melt it. I prefer Swiss.

Grab a good bun. You’ll want mayo, barbecue sauce and coleslaw. Mayo on the bun, bbq on the tofu, onions and coleslaw on top of all of it.

So good.

I don’t eat tofu every day. I don’t even always eat it every week. We do make it at least twice a month. You can fiddle with cooking techniques to get a texture you like that fits with your nutrition goals.

I cook meat, too. A lot of Asian dishes treat tofu like a vegetable, mixed in with the meat. In my house, I have a few people who find the texture of most meats to be really off-putting. Tofu generally doesn’t prompt the same reaction.

It’s also a bonus protein, something that stays good in the fridge way longer than raw meat does, and it’s really not hard to make it taste good.

And now I can know that some of the organic crops around here might just end up in the tofu I’m slicing up next time.

So cool.

Erin Sommers is a reporter for the Pocahontas Record-Democrat. See the newspaper’s new website at www.recorddemocrat.com.