Tempt Your Tastebuds with Tempeh

Unlike its spongy fermented soybean sister tofu, tempeh excels in texture of soft-chewy beans caked together with silky fuzz. That mix of whole beans and mellow molds makes for great taste, too. Even simply fried and sprinkled with a touch of salt, tempeh surprises with a rather complex flavor that is at once nutty, savory and tangy.

Best of all, tempeh is a nutrient-dense, probiotic plant-based protein that contains all nine essential amino acids our body can’t make on its own. For the longest time, though, that was not my impression of tempeh.

Tempeh was just a food I grew up with. It was a childhood staple, something my Indonesian mother always had in her kitchen, along with a few other fermented foods, including shrimp paste (terasi) and, of course, tofu—or, as she called it, tahu.

My childhood food memories are full of smells and tastes that range wildly between challenging and delicious.

Whenever she cooked her beloved Indonesian food, there would be the fishy smell of fermented shrimp paste, prompting kids next door to tell me: “It stinks at your house.” She pounded her own sambal with tiny, red chilies that burned a hole in your tongue. She brewed rice wine in a cloth-covered jar in her pantry under the stairs. It smelled weird and tasted even worse to my immature palate.

But tempeh, that was always the good stuff. She cubed it and added it to vegetables in coconut broth. Or she stir-fried thin-sliced tempeh with a spicy mix of shrimp paste, onion, garlic and sambal. I liked it especially when she cut tempeh in sticks and fried them crisp like fries and we got to dip them in sweet soy sauce.

Adult me had pigeonholed tempeh as an Indonesian food, even when it emerged everywhere else as the plant-based power protein that it is. I never looked for it outside of Asian stores. I never cooked it any way other than how I knew from my childhood. I’d eat it alongside steamed bok choy with peanut sauce and sticky rice but I never thought of putting it on a sandwich.

That all changed when I spotted tempeh on a vegetarian menu. Not in a curry, not served with rice. No, it was fried tempeh on a bun with coleslaw and pickles. In a light bulb moment, suddenly the dots connected: To suit my less-meat, more plant-based protein lifestyle, why on earth did I not cook more with tempeh?

I now no longer limit myself to dishes I grew up with when it comes to cooking with tempeh. I use it anywhere from crumbled in a peppery tomato sauce to baked with barbecue sauce. But one childhood favorite always pops up: crispy sticks of tempeh that we dip in a little sweet soy sauce.