Will Lotus Seeds Tofu? Will they Tempeh? I knew the answer to one of these questions before beginning. Or so I thought.
WATCH the new video experiment
Why Lotus Seeds
Hello friends and not-yet-friends!
When Jared from Weird Explorer challenged me to try tofuify Lotus Seeds, I immediately said yes. Yes to trying, but privately, no I did not think they would. Lotus Seeds are high in starch which can (1) interfere with coagulation and/or (2) make the resulting tofu texture mushy and not bouncy. Plus from a nutritional standpoint, I felt they were miles apart from soy. Dried Lotus Seeds have only 60 grams of protein per pound compared to soy’s 167 grams.
For “Will it Tofu?” I’m always aiming to make bouncy tofu that has high protein comparable to soy tofu. Plus I want the texture to hold together though stir-frying, boiling and otherwise stand up to cooking techniques like firm soy tofu would.
At the time, I had just posted my first tempeh-making video to the channel which viewers seemed to love. Tempeh, being from Indonesia, and Lotus Seeds, which are commonly used in Asian cuisine, I thought there was a good chance Lotus Seed Tempeh was already a thing. One quick Google search confirmed my suspicion with this paper titled Lotus Seed Tempeh Innovation to Increase Local Food Availability Through Sustainable Alternatives by Khosyiati, Setiawan, Ma’ruf, and Azizah. Because this team successfully made Lotus Seed Tempeh using fresh lotus seeds, I was pretty confident I could reproduce the result using the dried version.
Ingredients
While Lotus Seeds are can be grown in North America, it’s not very common and not easy to buy. So I got Dried White Lotus Seeds from the Asian supermarket, T&T, for about $10 Canadian for 226 grams. Soon it will be Mid-Autumn Festival so I expect them to start going on sale. Unfortunately, I was not able to catch a deal this time for the 3 packs I used for these experiments.
For the tempeh attempt, I used the same brand of tempeh starter as previous: Cultures for Health Soy-Free Tempeh Starter (affiliate link).
For tofu, I prepared the usual calcium sulfate (affiliate link) and water slurry as the coagulating agent.
How did it all go down?
Watch the video to find out! 😉
Then, check out Jared’s deep-dive video on the uses of the Lotus Plant on his YouTube channel, Weird Explorer!
