Vegan mapo tofu — Dulce de mirchi

Mapo tofu is one of my go to Chinese dishes! I absolutely love this main dish from the Sichuan province in China. It’s comforting, satisfying and full of flavor. The tofu melts in your mouth and the sauce has a distinct spicy and numbing sensation to it.

I’m sharing with you two styles of mapo tofu you can make. You can either make a Sichuan style mapo tofu (using doubanjiang — salty fermented broad bean and soy bean chilli paste) or a Korean style mapo tofu (using gochuchang — fermented soy bean and glutinous rice chilli paste). What I love about the Chinese doubanjiang paste is the fermented broad beans which the gochuchang doesn’t have. You can choose which one to make depending on the flavor profile you are looking for and the ingredients you have available. Largely, they are very similar.

I would usually add fermented black beans (douchi) to this recipe. However, due to limited access of ingredients in this lock down, I was unable to get any. If you have them, definitely add it to this recipe.

Mapo Tofu

Cooking time — 15 minutes

Servings — 3

Ingredients

Lite firm silken tofu — 250 g

Sesame oil —1 tbsp

Doubanjiang — 1 tbsp OR Gochuchang — 2 tbsp

(according to taste/availability)

Red Sichuan pepper — 1/4 tsp

Shoyu (or light soy sauce) —1 tbsp

Filtered water — 1 cup

Tapioca starch (or corn starch) — 2 tsp

Scallions finely chopped (green and white part) —30 g

Ginger minced — 5 g

Garlic minced — 10 g

Red Thai bird chili - to taste (optional)

Press your tofu. Place your tofu in between two paper towels and plates. Let the tofu sit for around 30 minutes to 1 hour to release all the water in the tofu.

Cut your tofu into cubes the size of your choice. For mapo tofu, I like ~ 2 cm cubes.
Pound sichuan peppers slightly so they crack with a mortar and pestle.
Make a slurry by combining water and tapioca starch. Stir well.
Heat sesame oil on low heat in a pan. Once slightly heated, add sichuan peppercorns and
sauté for around 30 seconds.
Add the gochuchang/doubanjiang paste and sauté for another minute so oil and chili paste starts combining together.
Add garlic, ginger, dry red chilli and scallions. Sauté for another 1 minute.
Next, add the shoyu.
Stir your slurry, add it to the pan, and mix well. Keep stirring till your sauce starts to thicken.
Once thickend, carefully slide to the tofu cubes into the pan. Carefully coat the cubes with the sauce. Do not stir. You don't want your tofu cubes to break! Cover with a lid and allow the tofu to absorb the flavor for about five minutes. This will still result in a lot of sauce. I personally like it this way, if you like less sauce you can cover it for longer so the sauce will reduce and the tofu will absorb the flavor more.
Garnish with finely chopped scallions and sichuan pepper for an extra numbing sensation! Serve with steamed jasmine rice or rice of your choice.

Notes

— Make sure you use firm silken tofu. Silken tofu is essential for the texture of this recipe. The firm kind ensures you don’t have tofu which crumbles.

— Some people like their Mapo tofu very salty. I personally don’t. You can alter this by the amount of spicy fermented paste you are adding or the amount of time you cook the sauce for. The more you reduce the sauce, the saltier it will be.

—Please note that the doubanjiang paste is a lot saltier than the gochuchang paste.

— A lot of people ground the Sichuan pepper to a fine powder. I like to just lightly pound it to release the aroma and flavor. You can choose to increase the amount of sichuan pepper or pound it more for a stronger flavor and numbing sensation!