Tofu Ground Beef

I am not a fan of fake meat. I've tried it, admitted that it wasn't bad, and subsequently never ate it again. For me, there is little point in being vegetarian if you spend your meals pining after that which is forbidden. Rather, I enjoy vegetables and grains and legumes on their terms--as vegetables, grains and legumes.

However, like all things, there are exceptions. One dish that I sorely miss is mabudofu: hearty, slightly spicy, totally delicious and belly warming. Unfortunately, the main ingredient is ground beef. Besides ground beef, there are chunks of tofu, and green onions for garnish. All this served on top of steaming, hot rice. I tried making vegetarian mabudofu once. I opened up the packaged, forewent the ground beef, and just added tofu.

It was a disgusting mess.

Since then, my desire for good, but quick vegetarian mabudofu has only increased. This was a childhood favorite for me and a quick standby for my parents. We'd often have a roll of frozen ground beef in the freezer, and our fridge was always stocked with multiple boxes of tofu. I would also heavily encourage my dad to make it whenever I saw we had ground beef (i.e. almost every week). I was nothing short of obsessed. I probably still am.

So there a few obstacles in my way to obtaining a good recipe for veg mabudofu. One, a ground beef substitute. I could, of course, go the fake meat route. For reasons outlined above, I'd rather not. Although it may be my Plan Z, should all other options fail. Trader Joe's sells a meatless ground beef, though I've yet to try it. However, there is something I have found that sounds perfect: tofu ground beef. Now, this is not a store-bought soy product chemically manipulated into looking like and tasting like ground beef. Rather, it's a seemingly straightforward and simple way to give tofu a ground beef texture. I found it buried in a cookpad recipe. I've yet to try it, but I'm writing about it and posting it so that I'll hopefully get around to trying it out sooner rather than later.

Tofu Ground "Beef"

Ingredients
1 block of firm tofu (Probably the firmer the better, although some experimentation is certainly in order to determine whether extra-firm [sold in the plastic tub filled with water] or super firm [sold vacuum packed without water] would be better. The original recipe recommends the extra-firm sold in water.)
Sesame or neutral oil
Soy sauce

Instructions
1. Wrap the tofu in paper towels, place on microwave-safe plate and microwave for 2 minutes.
2. Drain off the excess moisture completely.
3. Heat up sesame oil (or neutral oil) in a pan over medium heat. Add the tofu, then scramble. Chopsticks probably work best for scrambling them into ground beef sized pieces. Keep scrambling and browning them until it begins to resemble ground beef.
4. Add a teaspoon or so of soy sauce, stir fry quickly (a bigger utensil would probably better at this point, once it's been broken up into pieces), then remove from heat.
5. Serve in place of ground beef in mabudofu.