This is another one of those recipes that has lived in my head for awhile before I actually attempted it. As a fairly new vegan, tofu is a hard thing for me. Not so much the taste, but the texture. Here, we baked before stir frying and it makes all the difference to me. No more mushy tofu!

I wanted to do lettuce wraps (for photography purposes, I did it in a bowl) and fill them with Udon Noodles, veggies and the crispy tofu bites that simultaneously marinated and stir fried in a homemade asian orange peel sauce. I would just make more of that sauce next time around. It reduces down, so it almost caramelizes the crispy tofu. Everything is better caramelized. Caramelization = flavor!

Broccoli and carrots are par-cooked prior to adding the tofu to the wok. Udon noodles are very easy to find in your grocer’s asian section. They cook just like pasta. In a pinch, you could use fettucine. Udon just have a denser texture which I happen to love.

The tofu is first pressed free of all it’s water (simply wrap the drained 12 oz. block of extra firm tofu in paper towels, place it on a plate, set something heavy on it – like a cast iron pan – and top that with something heavy too. I used a large can). This sits for 15 minutes.

Then, we cubed it up and placed on a silpat (or parchment) lined baking sheet. Baked at 400 degrees for 25 minutes. I learned this method from Minimalist Baker’s Crispy Peanut Tofu recipe. While I may never be a huge fan, this has changed my opinion of tofu. I can tolerate the texture MUCH better now. So thank you, thank you, thank you Dana from Minimalist Baker. You rock! 🙂

I think next time, I would flip the tofu halfway through so it was slightly less crispy on just this one side but had a bit of crisp on both sides. Make sense? 🙂

We have four leaves of butter lettuce here and this recipe makes four nice lettuce wraps.

We saved a few orange rinds for garnish, but the flavor when they are stir fried almost candies them. Yum! I highly recommend stir frying them with the rest of the ingredients. We topped ours with a sprinkle of red pepper flakes. This part is optional.

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