Trying to make it: House Foods Tofu Burger Patty Mix
It's not in a store near me, and I want it, so I guess... we'll see how this goes?
Sending this one out as a tasty treat to show my non-subscribers what they could get if they committed to giving me money. My subscribers only newsletters typically focus on recipe development, sometimes working out a recipe over the course of uh…. quite a while. They are also less edited. If you like this, please subscribe. I use the money to buy groceries for a few of my neighbors.
The inspiration for this recipe development is just…. I really wanted the House Foods Tofu Burger Patty Mix. I like it a lot. I think of it often.
It is not especially easy to locate the mix for these, because it’s pretty much just sold at Japanese groceries, and there aren’t any of those very close by. Despite that, I had a real hankerin for the house foods tofu burger patty mix, so I thought: can I approximate it? I have a bunch of random ingredients in my house, things I’ve bought for one cooking project and rarely used since then, and my new favorite toy: a tub of lactic acid that I add to everything.
Anyway, here are the ingredients in the tofu burger patty mix.
Ingredient breakdown
I looked up the ingredients list, which like, yes, definitely some of these things I can handle (bread crumbs, easy, dried minced onion… well I have onion powder that’s close, I’ve got MSG, and also hondashi, which is powdered bonito with MSG so that seems good) but some of them are much harder… dried pickled ginger? SOY SAUCE POWDER? I guess this is what makes it food science!
I noticed, over and over again, as a component of ingredients, something called “dextrin” which I was unfamiliar with. I found a neat little write up of it from Bob’s Red Mill which seems to say that dextrin is a health food, ergo the tofu burger patty mix is a health food, which is probably not true, and also irrelevant. Unfortunately, dextrin isn’t really something that you can make at home. You can buy it, from like, molecular gastronomy places, but that is harder than just ordering a 10 pack of the tofu patty mix, and also more expensive, so that doesn’t really help.
Dextrin seems to aid in browning and crisping, but its presence in powdered things suggests that it does slightly more than that. Don’t know what it means, because I’m not a food scientist, but I thought it was worth noting.
Anyway, the primary issues that I see with this are as follows:
Flavor: without the extensive use of powdered flavors it’s probably hard to get the density of savory goodness into the patty
Relative gloopiness: you want your tofu burger patty to be gloopy enough that it sticks together, but not so gloopy that it is like a crepe or pancake.
Because a homemade version of this will use actual soy sauce instead of powdered soy sauce, the tofu will probably need to be drier to begin with.
Brief research indicates that modified starch serves to help with stabilizing and emulsifying, probably the two most important things when you are trying to make crumbled up tofu resemble a burger patty. Unfortunately, that’s another one of those things they don’t sell at food bazaar.
It seems like the recipe uses a variety of starches, not sure why, but I assume there’s a reason. As a nod to this I used: tapioca starch and corn starch (because I had them) and kinako soy flour, because again, I had it. Kinako soy flour adds a toasty sort of savory note, which I thought would be good, and also… flour is a binder?
The Hambagu question
When thinking about how to construct this recipe, I thought of hambagu, a food which I have never had, but have seen on several Japanese cooking blogs.
I figured that this recipe might have more in common with a tofu hambagu, although I don’t know if that has any basis in fact! I kinda thought “well it’s described as a burger patty in the title so…?”
Hambagu seems to be more distinguished by the sauce (a mixture of wine, ketchup and tonkatsu in a lot of recipes) than its internal flavor, which seems to be, yeah, pretty much like a hamburger but with panko.
Recipes for homemade tofu hambagu often use a mix of tofu and meat, but I found a recipe that uses dried seaweed to absorb excess moisture. Interesting!
Unfortunately, Noah doesn’t like stuff that tastes like the ocean, so that one is out. That recipe does use an egg, which is probably a good idea, as long as this isn’t for vegans.
Ultimately, the tofu burger patty mix from house foods has… pretty much nothing in common with hambagu, except that they are both burger shaped. This was a dead end, but the using wakame to absorb liquid was too cool not to bring up.
Here’s the recipe
Well, okay, I just poked around and grabbed stuff out of my pantry and here’s what I came up with as an initial mix: (edit, this is now the second mix, but it’s basically the same, I just increased the amounts for most things and added panko and starch)
A few dashes Hing/Asafoetida powder (I have heard that this adds an onion/garlic-y flavor) (This is because I couldn’t figure out how to open it and had to stab the container, so I can’t measure it, but it was probably around 1/8 tsp)
Powdered onion 1/4 tsp + 1/8 tsp
Powdered garlic a few generous shakes, probably 1/8 tsp
Powdered ginger 1/2 tsp
Dried black lime (to make up for some acidity) a shake or two, less than 1/8 tsp (If you use the lactic acid you might not need this as well)
Kinako soy powder 1 tsp
Sugar 1/4 tsp
Hondashi 1/4 tsp (maybe actually a half teaspoon? Start small and go up, not everyone loves the flavor of hondashi, alas)—see my shopping list at the end for a suggestion for you vegans out there
Toasted sesame seeds 1tbs white + 1 tsp black
Lactic acid 1/4 tsp (you could probably do a bit of citric acid instead, but I just… love lactic acid)
MSG 1/8 tsp
1/4 cup panko
1 tsp tapioca starch
1 tsp corn starch
2 tbs soy sauce
1 block firm tofu
I mixed this together and then licked my finger and stuck it in, and yeah, the flavor is not bad! I find the smell of Hing to be a bit overwhelming, but I think that it really added an accurate sort of flavor, because with something like this you want something that tastes “kinda like garlic” but not “garlic”
I asked noah to taste it and he said “it’s good” which could mean literally anything and I asked him if it needed anything to which he responded “will you put salt in it?”
This is a big question! The original had soy sauce powder! Should I use soy sauce? Should I use salt? Should I use salt and soy sauce?
Soy sauce, obviously, adds a distinct flavor, in addition to salt. However, it’s wet. Salt on the other hand: no flavor just salt, but not wet. Tricky.
To help make up for this, I pressed the tofu for like…. quite a long time. Ages. Usually I don’t do this, but in this case I really did want it to be as bone dry as possible so that I could add some soy sauce to it. Once it had pressed for half an hour or so, I tore off chunks and then basically rubbed it between my hands to get little crumblies.
Here is what I did: I added 1 tbs of soy sauce to my crumbled up tofu and mashed it about until all of the tofu was seasoned. Then I let it sit for about 45 minutes. (This is because I needed to walk the dog, but it sounds nice to say it was to let the flavors… do something). When I got back, I added another tablespoon of soy sauce (these could happen at once, I am sure) then mixed in the powder mix. I heated a pan with some peanut oil (it’s just… better smelling than canola) using kinda gentle force (idk how else to explain it) I smooshed a big handful of the tofu mix into a patty. Fry at medium heat until golden brown and crispy, this happens pretty quickly. I didn’t have any issues with them holding together, which honestly shocked me. I spent probably 15-30 seconds pressing them together and then evening out the sides, which might have helped.
I had this with rice and tsukemono, and it was really good.
Shopping list
I know that you might not have all of these things. Here is what I used (with the exception of the mixed mushroom powder. I am linking to this instead because 1. hondashi is quite easy to come by, and 2., most of my paid subscribers are vegan). If you are interested in making the Vegan Key Lime Pie that I have forthcoming, buy the lactic acid and some citric acid from SOS chefs, as you will need them both.