Meatless Monday Tofu Salad

This is another “make this now” sort of meal. If you like lots of flavors, textures, and a sriracha kick of spice, this healthy dish is for you. Luckily it makes lots of leftovers and is even more delicious after it’s been sitting for awhile!

I planned to make summer rolls, but was feeling lazy was really hungry and didn’t want to make individual rolls. Tossing everything together turned out better than I had hoped. I would love to add some noodles to this for a little extra bulk. Otherwise, it was just perfect.

The ingredients:

1 block of firm tofu, drained, crumbled and seared in a pan on high heat until lightly browned

3 cups of grated carrots

2 large jalapenos, chopped

1 cup peanuts, roughly chopped

8 – 10 leaves of mint, shredded

juice of 1 lime

Before I started any other prep, I drained the tofu, crumbed it into a frying pan, and turned the heat to high. This tofu, from Trader Joe’s, was particularly watery, and exposing it to high heat dried it up and made it a lot more firm. If you have time, putting the chopped or crumbled tofu in the oven at a low temperature for a long time is also a good way to dry it out. Or you could buy a tofu press, which I definitely need to do.

Next up, I pulsed the peanuts a few times to get them roughly chopped and prepped my jalapenos, mint, and lime. My dear husband did all of the carrot grating.

When the tofu was nice and dry, I just tossed the tofu, peanuts, mint, jalapeno, and carrots in a casserole dish and squeezed the lime over. Then came the best part, the amazing dressing I made for our gyoza over the weekend and that I now want to put on everything.

1 cup of rice vinegar

1/4 cup or more of sriracha

a few drops sesame oil

chopped cilantro

If you like the above ingredients, you will want to find food to put it on. It is amazing, and it’s kind of how this whole dinner came about. 

The salad was seriously tangy, spicy, crunchy and offered a warm and cold contrast between the tofu and the rest of the ingredients. It also brought a little brightness to an otherwise very dreary day. I need the sun!

Meatless Monday is always a fun way to ensure we eat vegetarian eat least one day a week (though we usually do 3-4 days) and a nice time to try a new recipe or whip up something fun on your own.

Do you participate in Meatless Monday?