Did you know there’s a tofu variety that melts like cheese? How about one that bakes up like a pastry crust? George Stiffman ’19 is hoping that soon more Americans will be able to answer “yes.”
A self-described “tofu evangelist,” Stiffman is introducing Americans to tofu varieties they’ve likely never encountered. For this work, he was recently included in the inaugural USC Dornsife 10 to Watch list, which highlights outstanding alumni of the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.
Stiffman’s interest in plant-based eating started in high school. Concerns about climate change led himtoditch meat to improve his carbon footprint, but the shift was initially hard. Local vegetarian options and meat-substitutes weren’t all that exciting in his home town of St. Paul, Minnesota. “I found it really difficult to give up my favorite foods,” he says.
Then, Stiffman spent a summer in China studying Mandarin, where he encountered a wide range of plant-based dishes. “You could go downstairs out of your apartment building for breakfast and find fresh hot tofu pudding or mung bean cakes right there,” he says. “I decided to spend my career learning more about these foods and sharing them back home.”
The Tofu Apprentice
With thoughts of starting a restaurant or food business, he enrolled as a USC Marshall School of Business student. USC’s big-city location and local Chinese community were a major draw — as was the sunshine.
Stiffman learned traditional vegetarian Chinese cooking while studying abroad. (Photo: Nate DiDomizio.)
He eventually switched to an East Asian languages and culture degree, to focus on his Mandarin skills. At USC Dornsife, he found his fellow students inspiring and open-minded. “My classmates were more curious about the world, more exploratory,” he says.
While completing his degree, Stiffman embarked on numerous study-abroad programs to China. He studied Fujianese cooking with a Buddhist chef and apprenticed under Luo Zhongda, a fifth-generation tofu master in Guiyang.
The apprenticeship was physically demanding. Workdays started at 1 a.m., with Stiffman helping to heat vast cauldrons of soy milk over wood fires before it was curdled and then pressed into different forms. It was notably more hands-on than the industrial tofu production in the U.S., which produces the bland cubes most Americans are familiar with. “Working there opened my eyes to how you could make tofu that tastes really, really delicious if you put your heart and soul into it,” he says.
To(fu) boldly go …
After graduation, Stiffman began building a career as tofu’s most devoted hype man. In 2023, he published a cookbook, Broken Cuisine, recounting his experiences living, working and eatin
g in China. He credits writing skills built at USC Dornsife for enabling him to complete the project.
He’s cooked for celebrities, including actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Chinese filmmaker Feng Xiaogang, and lectured at the Culinary Institute of America. In 2024, he launched Soycery, which began as a pop-up selling barbecued tofu skewers and has since pivoted into a venture working to help institutional dining halls offermore tofu varieties.
His timing is good. Tofu is protein-packed, and protein is “having a moment” in Americans diets these days. However, for Stiffman, his work remains centered in his original concern for the environment as well as animals. “Tofu has three times lower carbon emissions than chicken and 25 times lower emissions than beef,” he says. Plus, it’s a great alternative for those displeased by modern-day animal agriculture.
Tofu might be an unusual focus for a career, but in an era in which technology is upending traditional career paths, pursuing the unexpected might be the best way forward. “The jobs themselves are going to rapidly change. Being able to think critically, figuring out where you can fit in or making your own role, that’s going to be really important,” says Stiffman.