Buffalo Tofu Lettuce Wraps

Have you ever thought you’d like the taste of something based on the smell alone?  Every time I’m in a restaurant and someone gets buffalo chicken wings, I think it smells so good, yet I don’t eat chicken so I really have had no idea if I’d like it or not.  I’ve tried buffalo sauce on fries, but it wasn’t the whole experience with dressing and celery.

I decided I’d come up with a way  to make something similar to buffalo chicken at home, including the bleu cheese dressing and celery served along side the wings.  Since we like wraps so much around here, a lettuce wrap sounded like a great balance to cool off the heat of the buffalo sauce.

These make a convenient weeknight meal.  If you are like me and do much of your cooking and prep on Sunday or Monday for the remainder of the week, make the dressing ahead.  It’s a favorite salad dressing in our house, we keep it for a week or so in a jar.

Buffalo Tofu Lettuce Wraps (gluten-free, dairy-free, vegan)

You will need one block of extra firm tofu for the wraps, plus extra for the dressing.  I mention this here so you will set it out to drain first, before doing anything else.  I like to let my tofu drain all day before cooking it. 

I’ve been making this dressing for years and am sure at some point it was inspired by another recipe.  I browsed the web for a source, dug through my veg cookbooks and never did find an exact duplicate of this recipe.  If you know the source, please let me know so I can give proper credit. It’s sure delicious!

Non-Dairy/Vegan Bleu Cheese Dressing
3 oz. extra firm tofu (not silken)
1/2 t. garlic powder
1/2 t. onion powder
1/4 t. sea salt
1 cup Nayonaise or other non-dairy/vegan mayo
1 t. tahini (this is a big flavor changer, don’t skip it)
juice of 1 small lemon, about 2 T.
1/2 t. apple cider vinegar

Crumble the tofu into little pieces.  These will be the chunks of bleu cheese in your dressing.  Mix with all other ingredients into a bowl.  Refrigerate for an hour before serving to allow flavors to combine.

Baked Buffalo Tofu
1 block extra firm tofu, cut into 1″ cubes
1/3 cup Frank’s Red Hot Sauce, Original (or other brand, just make sure it is gluten-free)
1/3 cup Earth Balance, melted
2 T. apple cider vinegar

3 to 4 stalks of celery
1 head of iceberg lettuce

Combine Frank’s hot sauce, melted Earth Balance and apple cider vinegar in a large bowl.  Add tofu cubes and toss well.  Let sit  for an hour.  Don’t refrigerate or the Earth Balance will solidify instead of marinating the tofu.  Toss occasionally if you think of it.

Heat oven to 400 degrees.  Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.  Put tofu cubes on the sheet and bake for 15 minutes.  Take out and toss, stir, flip, whatever you’d like to do to make sure the tofu is cooking evenly.  Put back into the oven for another 15 minutes.

While the tofu finishes baking, slice up 3 to 4 stalks of celery into small pieces.  Pull the large leaves off of the iceberg lettuce to make the lettuce wraps.  Invert them onto a coffee cup and store in the refrigerator until you are ready to make the wraps.

Assemble the wraps by putting a bit of the tofu into the lettuce, sprinkle with celery and put dressing on top.

We make about 8 wraps from one recipe, however this will vary with how large you make the wraps.  Enjoy!