For crispy on the outside and soft on the inside tofu, this has been my go-to:
• Use fresh medium firm tofu, cut into small cubes
• Do the stir frying in non-hydrogenated margarine as opposed to oil. Heat the margarine before putting in the tofu cubes, but don't make it extremely high heat yet. Otherwise the outside may burn.
• You may use a lid just to help speed up the heating of the margarine to fry the first side of tofu, but it's important not to leave it too long. Otherwise the water gets trapped and you will not get crispy on the outside tofu. Putting the lid on at all is not required in many cases.
• While stir frying the first side of the tofu cubes, I season the top layer with dry garlic powder, paprika, and a bit of black pepper and salt. (For salt, I keep in mind that the margarine is already salted.)
• instead of waiting for the first side that is being cooked to reach the brown color that I desire from the start, I let it reach a light gold and then flip it to the top (seasoned) side, and then return to the original side later to complete the cooking. I believe it works like this because the water from the fresh tofu kind of gets trapped underneath the cubes upon first being put into the pan, so it doesn't develop the crispy crust so much. However, the top side has been exposed to the air the most while being heated by frying pan even if it is not indirect contact right now. Therefore, more water has probably evaporated from this side than any other on the tofu at this point and will crisp the fastest, while the only partly cooked side gets to evaporate while the seasoned side is being crisped. Additionally, this might be my imagination but I feel like the seasoning on this particular side helps create crust, and give me a feel for how much to fry this particular batch of tofu to get my desired crispy level.
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