So, the heresy here is that we only make tofu when we run low on okara. Don’t get me wrong: we enjoy homemade tofu quite a bit, but we can buy high quality tofu in the grocery store and truly can’t tell much of a difference. Yes, the homemade tastes a bit better when you eat it by itself … but who does that? Okara, now, that’s the stuff which can’t be obtained anyplace that I’ve been able to find, and it adds so much to quickbreads and cookies that I don’t think I’ll ever be without it again.
We get about 3 times the volume of okara as we do tofu, by the way, so in a typical batch we’ll end up with probably 3 cups of tofu, but easily 8 or 9 cups of okara. We take that and dry it out either in the oven or in our dehydrator, depending on how lazy we’re feeling (the dehydrator lives down in the garage, and requires carrying trays of steaming Okara down the outside stairs). After it’s dry, we put it into an airtight bin and it keeps just fine for months (see, if you cook cookies and quickbreads, you eat cookies and quickbreads … hence the shelf-life here).
Coconut Macaroons aren’t the only things you can make with okara, but they’re the only thing I’ve found which absolutely requires okara. Everything else you can swap in some oat bran, some extra flax seeds, whatever, but the Coconut Macaroons require that you take the time to make okara, primarily because the okara’s texture matches better with the coconut, and the okara doesn’t add any more gelatinousness as flax seeds would. They’re worth making, and the extra protein & fiber are a great addition to anything else you might want to make.
Besides, you get the added bonus of people thinking you’re strange and cool for making your own tofu, and you get recipes that most other people have no hope of duplicating.
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Homemade tofu? Went bad in the fridge … but the Okara’s still with us. 😉