Oregano Tofu and Farro Salad with Green Beans and Olives
Cubes of tofu seared hard with dried oregano and sliced garlic, tossed while warm with blistered green beans, farro, burst cherry tomatoes, torn olives, and a lot of lemon.
Why You'll Love This Recipe
This started as a way to use up a container of farro and half a bag of green beans, and it has turned into the lunch I make most often in late summer. Everything happens in one skillet in about fifteen minutes. The beans go in first with nothing but heat, which blisters them in dark patches and keeps the inside crisp, and then the tofu takes over the pan and browns in the oil the beans leave behind. Farro underneath does the job it is best at, which is staying chewy and separate under something warm and oily.
Dried oregano is doing more here than it looks like it should. Crumbled between your palms right before it goes in the pan, it wakes up and smells like a Greek kitchen, and it clings to the browned faces of the tofu where a fresh herb would just wilt. Sliced garlic goes in with it and turns pale gold in under a minute. That combination, plus torn kalamata olives and a quarter cup of lemon juice hitting the hot pan, is most of what this bowl tastes like, and none of it takes any technique to get right.
I like it best five minutes after it comes off the heat, when the tomatoes have slumped into the grain and the arugula has half wilted from the warmth without going slimy. It packs beautifully for the next day cold, which is not the same dish but is a good one, sharper and firmer, and it is genuinely better with an extra squeeze of lemon at that point. Make the farro on a weekend and this becomes a fifteen minute lunch on a Wednesday.
Ingredients
- 2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
- 1 1/3 lb firm tofu, drained, pressed dry, and cut into 3/4-inch cubes
- 2 tsp dried oregano, crumbled between your palms
- 4 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
- 1/4 tsp fine sea salt
- 14 oz green beans, topped and cut in half on an angle
- 10 oz cherry tomatoes, halved
- 2 1/2 cups cooked farro, from about 1 cup dry
- 1/3 cup kalamata olives, pitted and torn in half
- 3 packed cups arugula
- 3/4 cup chopped flat-leaf parsley
- 1/4 cup lemon juice, from 2 lemons, plus the zest of one
- 1/2 tsp coarsely ground black pepper
Instructions
- Press and cube the tofu: Drain the tofu, set it between two folded towels with a heavy pan on top, and leave it ten minutes while you trim the beans. Cut it into three-quarter-inch cubes and pat the cut faces dry once more. Dry tofu browns, wet tofu steams, and the difference shows up in the first two minutes in the pan.
- Blister the green beans: Set a large skillet over high heat with no oil at all. When it is genuinely hot, add the green beans in one layer and leave them for two minutes without touching them, until they are blackened in patches and smell toasted. Toss, cook two minutes more, then tip them out onto a plate. They should still squeak when you bite one.
- Brown the tofu: Lower the heat to medium-high, add the olive oil, and add the tofu cubes in a single layer with the salt. Leave them undisturbed for three minutes, then turn them and repeat twice, about eight minutes in total, until at least three faces on most cubes are deep golden and the edges have gone slightly crisp.
- Oregano, garlic, tomatoes: Crumble the oregano between your palms directly into the pan, add the sliced garlic, and stir for forty seconds, until the garlic is pale gold and the oregano smells sharp and sweet. Add the cherry tomatoes and cook one to two minutes more, pressing a few with the back of the spoon so they burst and their juice loosens everything stuck to the pan.
- Toss it all together: Take the pan off the heat. Add the farro, the blistered beans, the torn olives, the lemon juice and zest, the parsley, and the black pepper, and fold everything through until the grain has taken on the color of the pan. Fold in the arugula last so it only half wilts, then let it sit five minutes before serving so the farro drinks up the juices.
Variations
- Chile and lemon zest: Add a pinch of crushed chile flakes with the garlic and double the lemon zest for a sharper, hotter version.
- Charred red pepper: Blister a sliced red bell pepper alongside the green beans for sweetness and a second color in the bowl.
- Dill and cucumber: Fold a cup of chopped dill and a diced cucumber in off the heat, which pushes the whole thing cooler and greener.
- White beans: Add a drained can of cannellini beans with the farro for a softer, creamier bowl alongside the chewy grain.
Storage & Leftovers
Four days in a sealed container in the refrigerator, and it eats well cold straight from the box. The tofu firms and the beans lose their squeak, but the farro holds its chew completely and the olives and oregano get stronger overnight. Add a fresh squeeze of lemon before you eat it cold and it comes back to life.
To reheat, tip a portion into a dry skillet over medium-high and leave it flat for two minutes before stirring. That crisps the tofu again and warms the grain without turning the tomatoes to sauce. The microwave works but softens everything, and the browned faces on the tofu are half the reason to make this.
It freezes for up to two months, though with a change in character: the tofu goes spongier and chewier and the green beans soften. Thaw overnight in the refrigerator and reheat in a skillet rather than from frozen. Freezing the cooked farro separately is the better move if you are planning ahead.
Notes & Tips
- Start the beans in a dry pan: Oil at that heat smokes and the beans end up boiling in it. A bare hot skillet is what gives you the blackened blisters and the toasted smell.
- Leave the tofu alone: Every time you stir it in the first three minutes you tear off the crust that is trying to form. Three turns total is all it needs.
- Crumble the oregano in your hands: Rubbing dried oregano between your palms breaks the leaves open and releases the oils. Straight from the jar it tastes dusty by comparison.
- Add the lemon off the heat: Lemon juice boiled in a hot pan turns flat and slightly bitter. Take the skillet off the burner first and the acid stays bright.
- Let it sit five minutes: Farro keeps absorbing pan juices after the heat is off. Those five minutes are the difference between a dressed grain and a wet one.
Nutrition & Mindful Eating
- Tofu, farro, and green beans each hold up a corner of this bowl. The tofu carries the protein and takes on the browning, the farro brings the chew and the bulk, and the beans and tomatoes keep it juicy and sharp so a warm grain salad never turns stodgy.
- Firm tofu is set with calcium salts, and that is why a block of it carries as much calcium as it does alongside a serious amount of protein. Cubed and browned hard it turns nutty and chewy at the corners, which is a completely different food from the same block simmered in a sauce.
- Farro is a whole wheat grain with the bran left on, so it keeps its bite through cooking and brings the fiber that comes with it. It behaves better than most grains in a warm salad because it takes on the pan juices while staying separate.
- Green beans blistered in a dry skillet stay crisp inside and pick up a toasted, almost smoky edge, and they add fiber and vitamin C to the bowl. Cherry tomatoes burst into the pan and give up lycopene along with the juice that ends up dressing the farro.
- Dried oregano, sliced garlic gone gold, torn kalamata olives, and a quarter cup of lemon are what you actually taste, resinous and salty and sharp all at once. A bowl with this much tofu and grain in it holds you well past the middle of the afternoon.
- As you eat, look for the blackened patches on the beans and the crisp corners on the tofu, and notice how the lemon keeps lifting the bowl right through to the last few forkfuls.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I use canned or frozen green beans?
Frozen beans work if you thaw them and dry them thoroughly first, though they will never blister the way fresh ones do. Canned ones are too soft for this and will fall apart in the pan. If fresh beans are not available, blistered broccoli florets or snap peas do the same job.
What other grain works under this?
Barley is the closest in chew, and bulgur, wheat berries, or brown rice all hold up. Quinoa works too but goes softer in the pan juices, so add it right at the end and fold gently. Whatever you choose, cook it a minute short so it stays separate.
Why dried oregano rather than fresh?
Dried oregano is the one herb I reach for dried on purpose. Drying concentrates its resinous, peppery side, and that is what stands up to a hot pan and sticks to the tofu. Fresh oregano is milder and greener, and it collapses in the heat rather than perfuming it.
Can I skip pressing the tofu?
Only if you buy the vacuum-packed super-firm kind, which comes with very little water in it already. Standard water-packed firm tofu really does need the ten minutes under a weight, because the surface moisture is what stops the cubes from browning.