麻婆豆腐 (Mapo Tofu)

good protein source!

Thanks to the Lopez for reminding me to post this!

Ingredients

  • Aromatics (all diced)
    • Ginger
    • Scallions
    • Garlic
  • Sauces/flavored ingredients
    • 辣豆瓣酱 (spicy bean curd-based sauce); NOT optional
    • 豆豉 (fermented black beans)
    • 泡椒 (pickled spicy peppers); somewhat optional
    • Light soy sauce
    • Salt/sugar/MSG (to taste)
  • Spices
    • Sichuan peppercorn
  • Useful tools
    • Pestle and mortar (to grind peppercorn into powder)
  • Ground pork or beef (I think beef might be more traditional, but both are good)
  • Pork lard (optional)
  • Cornstarch
  • Chicken stock (important especially if you’re not using lard)
  • Chili powder (optional, depends on how spicy you want it)

Cooking:

The recipe will be for one standard sized pack of tofu.

Prep: dice the ginger/scallions/garlic. You can use 1-2 scallions, 3 cloves of garlic, and like 1.5 as much ginger as garlic. These are just rough amounts, you can use more if you want. Separate the scallion whites and greens. Soak around 10-15 豆豉 in a little bit of water. Prepare 1-2 泡椒. Caution: the 泡椒 turns out to be quite spicy, so if you don’t want it too spicy, I would just use 1, and also remove the spicy after around 3 minutes in the dish. You can also skip this ingredient, though I think it does make the flavor taste more authentic. Cut your tofu into squares of your desired size. I prefer to use a soft/silken tofu; I think firm tofu doesn’t pair with the rice very well. Prepare around 4oz of ground pork/beef. You can also use more (say around 8oz) if you want; this is just personal preference. I usually err on the side of more meat. Crush some peppercorns into powder; you will sprinkle this over the top of the dish at the end.

First Step: Fry the ground pork/beef at low/medium temperature. The goal is to render out the fat, which you do by slowly frying it. If you are using lard, add it at this point as well. If not, add a bit of neutral oil. You might notice that the fried meat has a strong “meaty” smell (which is typical for this type of meat). This will go away as you fry the meat (volatile sulfur compounds will vaporize), and adding aromatics later also helps. You can also add a splash of shaoxing wine when the meat is almost done frying, as alcohol is a strong solvent and helps those compounds vaporize as well.

After frying the meat and seeing the oil render out, add in the ginger/garlic/scallion whites, the 豆豉, and the 泡椒, and sichuan peppercorn (some recipes don’t add peppercorn to the dish directly, but rather add peppercorn powder at the end. I think both ways are fine. I usually do both: in this step, I only add a few peppercorns, like 3-4.). Fry until fragrant. Next, add in the 辣豆瓣酱. I would add around two large tablespoons, but this depends on how spicy you want it. Fry slowly until the oil from the 辣豆瓣酱 emerges. You know the classic red oil you see in mapo tofu? That comes from the spicy bean curd sauce. The goal here is to fry it at low/medium temperature to render out the oil from the sauce. If you fry it at too high temperature, then it will burn before the oil comes out, and your dish will be dry and not have that classic red oil.

If you have some burnt bits at the bottom of your pan, it’s fine; the chicken stock in the next step will help deglaze your pan. If you really have a ton of burnt bits, you can add a bit of shaoxing wine again to deglaze.

Second Step: Once your ingredients are fragrant and the oil has emerged, add chicken stock and bring it to a simmer. Then add your tofu. Add chicken stock so that the water level is around 1/2 - 3/4 the height of the tofu. Reduce the stock and stir the tofu around (gently!). Reduce until you have the desired amount of liquid. I would refer to the picture above; you sort of want the liquid to roughly cover the tofu. Once it has reduced enough, add cornstarch slurry until the dish reaches your desired thickness. Tip: you will have to add more cornstarch than you are expecting. If your dish turns out too watery, it is almost certainly because you didn’t add enough cornstarch (as opposed to that you didn’t reduce it enough). The cornstarch will make the broth have a very “smooth” consistency. Ideally, what happens is if you scoop some of the dish over rice, the broth shouldn’t completely be absorbed into the rice like water, but rather it should maintain some of its own shape. You can actually do this test to see whether you have added enough cornstarch.

Around 20 seconds before you remove the dish from the heat, add in the scallion greens. After plating the dish, sprinkle peppercorn powder over the top. This is super important and really gives the dish its signature flavor.