At Denver Tofu
Nearing the end of these soybeans’ journey, we come to perhaps the most complex part of the operation: the factory. But by virtue of Denver Tofu’s small size and narrow focus—they produce tofu and egg roll skins, and not much else—their inputs are also small. And the process is quick. From removing the dried beans from their burlap sacks to the finished package, making tofu takes about two hours.
Thirty years ago a Japanese man named Hiruhisa Yamamoto began Denver Tofu as a family business, growing it into what is now a substantial tofu operation. Spring Keim is DT’s office manager, a small, cheery Japanese woman who agrees to give me a tour of the facility (after ascertaining that I wasn’t, in fact, the competition). Keim is the only employee not working on the factory floor, and after sharing their energy and water bills, she shows me around the place.
I follow her down a short hallway to the loading room, filled with sacks of dried soybeans direct from Harmony’s conditioning plant; no doubt some of these beans were grown on Lonnie Miller’s farmed-with-care fields. Sandwiched between the towering mounds of organic beans, Keim points out the few small sacks of conventional soybeans that DT turns into non-organic tofu. I ask her why they even bother making conventional tofu: “Price,” she says. “King Soopers likes them.”
Thirty years ago a Japanese man named Hiruhisa Yamamoto began Denver Tofu as a family business, growing it into what is now a substantial tofu operation. Spring Keim is DT’s office manager, a small, cheery Japanese woman who agrees to give me a tour of the facility (after ascertaining that I wasn’t, in fact, the competition). Keim is the only employee not working on the factory floor, and after sharing their energy and water bills, she shows me around the place.
I follow her down a short hallway to the loading room, filled with sacks of dried soybeans direct from Harmony’s conditioning plant; no doubt some of these beans were grown on Lonnie Miller’s farmed-with-care fields. Sandwiched between the towering mounds of organic beans, Keim points out the few small sacks of conventional soybeans that DT turns into non-organic tofu. I ask her why they even bother making conventional tofu: “Price,” she says. “King Soopers likes them.”
Next stop: the factory. I step carefully on the slippery, milky white floor; puffs of steam hang in the air around the tofu-making machinery. The smell is sweet, and finally, the abstract soybeans I had been studying were becoming a reality as tofu.
An astonishing 70,000 pounds of tofu come out of this small room every month. I watch as four aproned men bustled at their various stations, ignoring the steam but staring at me warily.
The man working the first station, the squeezing machine, is Yamamoto himself. Here is where the beans, after soaking in water overnight, are made into soymilk. Keim points to a narrow metal tube above us that moves the soymilk from the squeezing station to the coagulating tubs. Tofu is made one firmness batch at a time—the firmer the end result, the more coagulant needed. Denver Tofu uses nigari, a sea salt from Japan, which helps separate the curds from the whey, so to speak, in about ten minutes.
The curd is then transferred to a pressure station, where the huge blocks of tofu are pressed, pressed and pressed again, releasing any excess moisture. The blocks are removed from the machine, cut into pound size cubes, and hand packed into their plastic bins. Once packaged, the tofu is dunked in hot water to kill any bacteria, then let sit in cold water for another few minutes. The final product is packed together and set in the refrigerator, usually only for a day or so.
Denver Tofu distributes mainly in Colorado, hand-delivering their products to Whole Foods in the Denver area and to the regional headquarters of stores like King Soopers and Safeway. The advantage of their small distribution area is that they can actually get the tofu from plant to store to dinner table within a few days, no preservatives needed.
An astonishing 70,000 pounds of tofu come out of this small room every month. I watch as four aproned men bustled at their various stations, ignoring the steam but staring at me warily.
The man working the first station, the squeezing machine, is Yamamoto himself. Here is where the beans, after soaking in water overnight, are made into soymilk. Keim points to a narrow metal tube above us that moves the soymilk from the squeezing station to the coagulating tubs. Tofu is made one firmness batch at a time—the firmer the end result, the more coagulant needed. Denver Tofu uses nigari, a sea salt from Japan, which helps separate the curds from the whey, so to speak, in about ten minutes.
The curd is then transferred to a pressure station, where the huge blocks of tofu are pressed, pressed and pressed again, releasing any excess moisture. The blocks are removed from the machine, cut into pound size cubes, and hand packed into their plastic bins. Once packaged, the tofu is dunked in hot water to kill any bacteria, then let sit in cold water for another few minutes. The final product is packed together and set in the refrigerator, usually only for a day or so.
Denver Tofu distributes mainly in Colorado, hand-delivering their products to Whole Foods in the Denver area and to the regional headquarters of stores like King Soopers and Safeway. The advantage of their small distribution area is that they can actually get the tofu from plant to store to dinner table within a few days, no preservatives needed.
