Best Baked Tofu Recipe Ever

1. Best Baked Tofu
   1. Crispy Marinated Tofu
2. Succulent, Crispy Baked Tofu (quick & Easy!)
3. Baked Tofu (easy & Oven Baked!)

This baked tofu is just delicious! Made simply with a flavorful salty and slightly sweet marinade, this tofu is baked to perfection for use in salads, sandwiches, stir fries, or on its own. A bit crunchy on the outside but still soft on the inside, this is our favorite classic baked tofu recipe.

This baked tofu couldn’t be easier or more delicious! With just a few simple ingredients, this marinated tofu is the perfect way to add to your Asian dishes. Just prepare your tofu, mix together a few ingredients, let your tofu get nice and marinated, and then bake! It’s absolutely delicious alone, but so good with other recipes. (Check out the top tips for a few ideas.)

Maple syrup – We love a little sweet with our salty soy sauce for our tofu, and maple syrup is perfect for that!

Best Baked Tofu

The full recipe & ingredients list are below, but here you’ll find a quick overview for making this recipe perfectly, along with useful tips and info!

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Calories: 160 kcal , Protein: 11 g , Fat: 9 g , Saturated Fat: 1 g , Sodium: 508 mg , Potassium: 42 mg , Total Carbs: 10 g , Fiber: 1 g , Sugar: 6 g , Net Carbs: 9 g , Calcium: 153 mg , Iron: 2 mg

Easy Garlic Baked Tofu

Nutritional values shown are general guidelines and reflect information for 1 serving using the ingredients listed, not including any optional ingredients. Actual macros may vary slightly depending on specific brands and types of ingredients used.

To determine the weight of one serving, prepare the recipe as instructed. Weigh the finished recipe, then divide the weight of the finished recipe (not including the weight of the container the food is in) by the desired number of servings. Result will be the weight of one serving.

In addition to being a certified health coach, certified yoga instructor, and mom of 3, Cheryl is also the recipe developer, editor-in-chief, food photographer, and passionate foodie behind 40 Aprons. Having spent the last 10+ years as a food blogger, she's become known for her flavorful recipes, detailed instructions, gorgeous photography, and down-to-earth approach to food and cooking in general.Let’s talk about tofu! Even as a vegetarian, I don’t eat a ton of it. When I do, however, I want it crispy, and crispy tofu is an elusive beast. I’ve shared this method here and here, but I’ve gotten such fantastic feedback that I wanted to highlight it.

Crispy Marinated Tofu

Extra-firm tofu is the only way to go, and I’ve found that the Trader Joe’s brand is the most firm of them all (plus, it’s only two dollars). It’s organic, too, which is important when you’re buying tofu because soy is conventionally treated with fertilizers, herbicides and insecticides. Look for tofu in the refrigerated section by the produce.

Water-logged tofu never gets super crispy. The key here is to slice the tofu into pieces before pressing it. Have you ever tried pressing a whole block, or even two halves? They just sit in soggy puddles. Slice them into smaller pieces to maximize the surface area. Press those, and you’ll extract more moisture—faster, too.

Now, you just need to toss your tofu in a little oil (just 1 tablespoon for the full batch), tamari or soy sauce (for some flavor) and cornstarch or arrowroot starch. The starch makes the edges extra crispy and irresistible (I got this idea from The Kitchn).

Succulent, Crispy Baked Tofu (quick & Easy!)

You might be wondering which starch is better. Cornstarch is a more processed ingredient, but it yields the crispiest results. Arrowroot is less processed and works well, but the outer covering can turn a little slippery and strange if you’re adding the tofu to a dish containing a lot of moisture (like curry).

Spread your prepared tofu in an even layer across a sheet pan. Don’t worry if your tofu fell apart a bit as you tossed it. Bake until golden brown, about 25 to 30 minutes. Boom! Perfect tofu.

Some people swear by cooking their tofu in a skillet, but it never turns out well in my cast iron skillets. It sticks, and the crispy bits end up sticking to the pan, which is a tofu tragedy. Plus, it requires more oil, and you don’t need to use a lot of oil to get crispy tofu.

Spicy And Crispy Oven Baked Tofu

It’s baked, rather than marinating it. Why? Water-logged tofu isn’t actually very good at absorbing flavor (something that I always suspected, which was confirmed by Deborah Madison, via Serious Eats).

So, bake your tofu in the oven to crispy perfection, then cook it in sauce, or drizzle sauce on top. This tofu is perfect for tossing into any recipe with Asian flavors, or any recipe that could benefit from some hearty vegetarian protein. It would be great in my Thai red curry or green curry.

You could replace the eggs in my kale and coconut fried rice and Thai pineapple fried rice with this tofu. It is amazing with peanut sauce drizzled on top, in any form. (Fun fact: my crispy tofu and peanut sauce collide in my cookbook!)

Meal Prep Tofu

Here is how to make super crispy tofu in the oven. Recipe yields 4 servings of tofu, as a complement to a larger meal.

*Make it gluten free: This dish is gluten free as long as you use gluten-free tamari, which is a variety of soy sauce that is usually (but not always, check the label) gluten free. I always use tamari instead of soy sauce because I prefer the flavor of it! Look for tamari next to the soy sauce in the Asian aisle of the grocery store.

The information shown is an estimate provided by an online nutrition calculator. It should not be considered a substitute for a professional nutritionist’s advice. See our full nutrition disclosure here.

Easy Crispy Tofu

Please let me know how it turned out for you! Leave a comment below and share a picture on Instagram with the hashtag #.

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© Cookie and Kate 2010 - 2023. All rights reserved. Cookie and Kate is a registered trademark of Cookie and Kate LLC.Tofu gets a bad rap for being flavorless, boring, and at times undesirably rubbery—but the hate is undeserved. Avoid thinking of it as a meat substitute, let it exist on its own terms, as its own thing, and be surprised by what it has to offer. Treat it kindly and you'll be rewarded with a versatile protein that can play the field as a sweet or savory ingredient.

Baked Tofu (easy & Oven Baked!)

Also known as bean curd, tofu is made from minimally processed soy milk that has been cooked and pressed into a block—essentially a vegan cheese. Depending on how much it's drained and pressed, tofu texture can vary from very soft, fragile silken to extra firm. Each type is suitable for different kinds of dishes. For baked tofu, the best kind to use is firm or extra firm; anything softer will likely crumble for this recipe.

Let's address the most popular complaint about tofu: its blandness. Just like a fresh cheese—think ricotta, cottage cheese, paneer, fresh mozzarella—it is mild in flavor. Add to the fact that it's made from relatively low-fat soybeans rather than rich, creamy cow's milk, it's a lot less indulgent-tasting straight out of the package. Produced and packaged with only very small quantities of salt, tofu needs to have the right background singers before its potential can truly shine. Fresh tofu isn't very porous, which means that even if it sits in a marinade, it won't take on a lot of flavor. 

Because of its high moisture content, there are two ways to season tofu effectively: cubing the tofu then soaking it in boiling salted water (2 tablespoons kosher salt to 2 cups water) or freezing then defrosting it. The soaking method flavors the tofu by osmosis as the salty solution displaces the unseasoned water content inside the tofu. The freezing method causes the moisture content inside the tofu to crystallize. As water turns to ice, cell walls are punctured, and upon defrosting, the once solid tofu will take on a tannish hue and porous, springy texture. Once completely defrosted, the tofu can be squeezed dry with a little more pressure, and its new spongey quality allows for much better absorption of flavorings and marinades.

Easy Crispy Baked Tofu (5 Ingredients)

If you don't want to go through too many extra steps to get flavor into your tofu, you can simply use an assertive sauce or dressing that coats and clings to the cooked tofu. This recipe uses a slightly spicy sesame-ginger marinade that gets brushed on as a glaze for a double dose of flavor.

Our primer on how to cook tofu recommends pressing tofu with a weighted drainage set-up for at least an hour to eliminate extra moisture in the tofu. Truth is, pressing tofu isn't always necessary for every occasion and is only preferred if