It just occured to me that we use TVP chunks in a lot of our recipes and I mention re-hydrating them but I never give an explaination. Well, here it is:

Re-hydrating TVP chunks is a very simple process. I'm sure there is a technical way to do it (one cup of tvp to so many cups of water) but I just use the eyeball method. This works for most recipes, the rest (like the beef stew we just dump the TVP during the cooking so it gets re-hydrated automatically. Here's how I do it for everything else.

I usually use 1 to 1 ½ cups of TVP at a time. This stuff will bloat up so start small. Put a pan of water on the stove to boil. When it's boiling or almost boililng kilthe heat and dump in the TVP. With a fork or spoon make sure the little floaty pieces stay submurged. Let it sit for a few mins. When the pieces stop looking like dry dog-food and start looking like little chunks of meat take a fork and pick one out. Try it, if it's firm but soft all the way through, it's done. If there's a hard spot in the middle, let it sit for a few more mins.

Pretty simple isn't it?