Tofu factories (Hilo, Honokaa, Keaau: house, buy, organic)

[TwoPearls]

Are there any tofu factories on the Big Island where you can go in with your container and buy fresh tofu? We have a place here in Portland – Ota Tofu – where you bring in your own container and they will fill it with tofu right off the line. It is unbelievably delicious stuff. Anything like that there?

If not, which packaged tofu at the grocery is the best?
Mahalo!

[annals]

I do not have information about tofu factories; however, tofu is very easy to make at home -- you only need soy beans and Epsom salt. It's a fun, slightly messy process. I used to make it regularly some years ago from organic soy beans, and it was unbelievably delicious.

[HonaunauLove]

I know a spot in Japan.

[hotzcatz]

I don't know of any tofu factories on the Big Island, although I've not looked for them. At our old house we had an old cast iron tofu grinder as yard art, but it's not functional as a tofu grinder anymore.

I've not noticed the brand names in the store, either, but you could perhaps check the names of the store brands and see if any are made locally, but I'd be surprised if there were any local tofu manufacturers. I don't know of anyone growing enough soy beans to make commercial tofu manufacturing possible, although there might be some folks growing edame (soybeans) for eating as boiled in the shell edame. Kinda like boiled peanuts but different.

Might be a nice local niche market, though. Grow an acre or so of soy beans and grind them into tofu. You'd probably want a mechanical picker for the soy beans and a mechanical tofu grinder. If you do that, I could use the bean leaf waste to feed the critters here, so pick a spot near Honokaa.

Hmm, soy milk is a byproduct of making tofu and we've started drinking soy milk instead of cow's milk (mostly because of the sugar content of cow's milk) so maybe we should start making tofu. How hard is it? How many soy beans have to be grown?

Okay, now I've gone and ordered soybean seeds to see how difficult it is to make tofu and soy milk. See what sort of trouble this forum can cause?

[Kalani79]

I think Oshiro makes Tofu in Hilo. They are almost across the street from Cost U Less.

[hotzcatz]

I always thought they were only a flower store! Next time we go to Hilo, we will drop in there and see what they have.

[whtviper1]

You can always come out to Oahu for our Tofu factory.

Aloha Tofu

[lily4]

There is a tofu factory out in the Shipman Industrial park called Natural Pacific Tofu. We used to go there and buy the ends of the tofu since it was a really good deal and good tofu.

Natural Pacific Tofu
16-205 Wiliama PL
Keaau, HI 96749