You Had Me At Taco.
If you’ve been following along with our social media activity, tacos are now a regular part of our weekly schedule. Not only do we host our good friends The Atacolypse Food Truck and Tha Flavor Bucket (who makes killer tacos by the way), but we’ve also been popping up alongside our friends Taco Distro, near the beach.
Tacos and beer go together like peanut butter and grape jelly. The flavor profiles are so complementary it’s almost like the first dude to brew a beer had a taco in his hand while pouring the first pints and thinking, “yep, that works well together.”
All the taco shenanigans aside, we’re just big fans of food. And the most versatile food we’ve been playing with recently is tofu. A block of extra firm tofu, drained properly and marinated, can emulate so many things so we figured why not plop some beer into a batter, add tofu and some other goodies like quick pickled onions, queso fresco, a semi-spicy aioli, and slap it all together into a tortilla? Blam-o, beer-battered tofu tacos!
We paired up our tacos with Marvintown, our 5.2% German Pilsner. It’s neutral enough to lend a beer flavor to the batter yet flavorful enough to add notes to the batter that will really complement your taco (and the beer you’re drinking with it!)
We sliced the tofu into cutlet-shaped slices lengthwise so they fit into the taco shell nice and easy with toppings. You can cube the tofu if you’d prefer we just had some issues getting everything to stay cohesively together inside the shell.
Ingredients
Tofu Slices
- 1 pound block of extra firm tofu, well drained
- 2 cups flour
- 1-1/2 cups of Marvintown German Pilsner or any beer to your liking. Get adventurous here if you’d like!
- 1 teaspoon paprika
- 1 teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon garlic powder
- ¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper
- ½ teaspoon spicy brown mustard (dijon or yellow work too)
Aioli
- ¾ cup sour cream
- ¼ cup mayo
- 1 tablespoon lime juice
- ½ teaspoon ground cumin
- ½ teaspoon hot sauce
- Salt, to taste
Toppings
- Quick pickled onions
- Cilantro, minced
- Fresh cut limes
Taco Instructions!
- Prepare the aioli: mix ingredients in a small bowl, salt if needed. Set aside.
- Prepare the batter: In a large bowl mix flour, salt, garlic powder, and the cayenne pepper. Add beer slowly while stirring and the mustard. You want a consistency similar to pancake batter.
- Heat ¼” of oil over medium heat in your favorite skillet (cast iron is best).
- Cut up your tofu into lengthwise slabs, you should end up with about 10-12 depending on your slicing thickness.
- Dip each piece of tofu into the batter, turning to coat both sides, then GENTLY place it into the hot oil, giving each piece space to do their thing. Once you’ve hit a golden brown color on the first side, flip it and repeat. Remove and place on a wire rack to drain .
- Once all the tofu is fried up, assemble tortillas! We like to brown ours in a skillet first then plop in your aioli, tofu slices, pickled onion, cilantro, queso fresco, then another drizzle of aioli on top, with fresh lime juice from those fancy lime wedges you sliced up.
If you have spare tofu slices just save them for breakfast the next morning paired with scrambled eggs to make breakfast tacos!