Oil

I sure learned something about oil today! I was making a stir fry and before cooking the veggies, I thought I’d fry the tofu first (to kinda make it like popcorn) so I put in two TBspoons of olive oil.

Since I didn’t want to be splash with hot oil and I wanted the oil to be hot, I put a lid over it. I put in the tofu a few 1″ cubes at a time so they’d all get cooked evenly. The first batch was good. By the time I took them out of the wok, the oil had got really hot and when I put the tofu in, it cooked like *snap* that and I kinda burned them! By this time, the oil was really looking all black and dirty and obviously way too hot. Of course, at the time, I didn’t realize that I should’ve turned down the heat. It was odd, when I put in the next batch, the corners got kinda blackish but it never got crispy. In fact, it didn’t even seem like the oil cooked into the tofu at all! (and I left it in a while) it was just squishy ‘n all. Finally I decided that something was wrong so I poured out the sooty oil and put in some fresh oil. It cooked much better and even the bubbling sound when the tofu was put in sounded better.

So, lesson to be learned . . . well, what would that be? I’ll let you decide