Many of our friends and family are vegetarian and with the the uptick in house guests since baby blue was born a few months ago I have been trying and up my vegetarian game. Which in turn has helped us reduce our meat consumption. This dish, mapo tofu, is now in heavy rotation here and is probably the most requested among our house guests.
I learned the recipe from the Youtube Channel Chinese Cooking Demystified
which is now my go-to channel for accessible ideas for Chinese cooking. Accessible is a little bit of a tricky word here as making Mapo Tofu does require some specialty ingredients and equipment, and a couple of somewhat technical steps, but with just little bit of practice its actually pretty easy to prepare.
Now most traditional recipes, including this one, call for some meat but in my opinion its totally unnecessary. As in I don’t put it in and no one has noticed “something is missing.” Other than that I do think everything else is strictly necessary, which means that you do pretty much have to make a trip to an asian market (or buy stuff off Amazon)
This recipe is honestly pretty close to the original so you may want to just head over to reddit for the extra commentary
Ingredients
- Soft tofu or medium or firm in a pinch. Silken doesn’t really work
- Peanut oil, ⅓ cup
- Sichuan peppercorns , 1 tbsp.
- Sichuan Chili Bean Paste
- Chili flakes 2 tbsp.We use gochugaru
- Douchi, black fermented beans, 1 tbsp.
- 4 cloves garlic
- 2 inches ginger
- Water, 1 cup
- Scallions, 2-4 stalks. Chopped into 1 inch sections.
- Seasoning mix: 1 tbsp soy sauce, 1 tbsp shaoxing wine, ¼ tsp MSG, ¼ tsp white pepper, ½ tsp sesame oil
- Cornstarch slurry. 1 tbsp cornstarch in ¼ cup water
Mise en Place
- Toast sichuan pepper in a dry wok over medium low flame. When the peppercorns start leaving streaks of oil in the bottom of the wok and become fragrant remove from heat and grind in a mortar and pestle
- Cut tofu into one inch cubes and cook in salted simmering water for 3 minutes. Remove from heat and set aside
- Peel and mince garlic and ginger, set aside
- Chop dochui, set aside
- Chop chili bean paste (good versions are kind of chunky) and set aside
- Chop scallions, white green parts set aside separately
- Mix seasoning mix, set aside
Process
- Heat your oil up to 220-230F and add chili bean paste. Keep everything moving and at this temperature for at least at least 90 seconds - 2 minutes. You will know you are done when the oil and paste are basically the same color
- Put Dochui in and mix.
- Put garlic and ginger in and mix.
- Put chili flakes in and mixed until you have paste ~1 minute
- Add water in and up to heavy simmer.
- Add tofu and let it simmer for 7 minutes. The sauce should be reduced by about one third
- Put white parts of scallion in. Cook for 15 seconds
- Heat off. Peppercorns in and mix.
- Plate (or not) and garnish with reserved scallion greens.
- Serve with plain white rice and baby bok-choy or other veg accompaniment, if desired
If you want to see a pro make this dish (slightly different recipe) with out a lot of extra commentary check this out.