[SPICY]Mapo Tofu: The Most Time-saving Special Dish 麻婆豆腐

Mapo Tofu is a wonderful choice for people who are interested in trying to cook Sichuan food, because it only takes less than 20 minutes. Amazingly time-saving! And, amazingly good taste! It represents one typical spicy flavor — tingling spicy, which was created by the combination of red dry pepper and prickly ash. I actually talked about it in the boiled pork/beef/fish slices, when I introduced the last step: using the heated oil to burn the red dry pepper and prickly ash and pour the oil onto the almost finished dish.

Mapo, meaning an old lady with pocks in Chinese, was used to refer to the person who created this dish in the 1860s of the Qing Dynasty. Prickly ash, which leads to a numb feeling when you taste it, is the key to Mapo Tofu. Good prickly ash with strong and intense flavor is the base for good Mapo Tofu. Also, the hot sauce made of broad beans introduced in the boiled pork slices dish is another key ingredient.

When you think about the name of the dish, you may think it’s an vegetarian option. However, it’s not. Another key component is tiny beef pieces that are as small as possible.

Step-by-Step:

1. Prepare a box of Tofu, 50g beef, prickly ash powder, hot sauce made of broad beans, soy sauce, garlic, ginger, green onion, starch, salt, cooking oil, cooking wine. (Starting to realize the similarity of the condiments in each dish??Yeah you are making progress!) You may also need a cooking funnel.

2. Cut tofu into cubes of 2 cm (3/4 inch),  and heat them with boiling water for about 3-5 minutes. Add some salt in the water while heating. Then filter the hot water and cool the tofu down with cold water, and you may change water for cooler temperature for multiple times. (This process helps the tofu absorbs some salt and also, the heating and cooling process makes the texture better.) Then dry the tofu with funnel again.

3. Chop the ginger, garlic and green onion into small pieces, heat some oil with high temp, and pour the ginger and garlic in it. Pour down the small beef pieces into the pan, and add some cooking wine, and some hot sauce made of broad beans.

4. Mix the things in the pan until they are evenly distributed and the wonderful smell of the hot sauce coming out, and add some water. PAY ATTENTION TO THE AMOUNT! You should add the water just enough to cover all the tofu you are pouring into later, and not too much so that the flavor is diluted. That’s why a smaller pan with a smaller radius might work better because you can cover the tofu with less water.

5. After the water is boiling, you can pour down the dried and cooled tofu into the water, and cook for about 5 minutes. Add some soy sauce to adjust the flavor. Add some salt if you feel like its’ not salty enough.

Mapo Tofu before the last step — adding prickly ash powder! I needed a little bit more water for this dish. Photo taken in August 2011.

6. Mix some starch with water, and pour it into the cooked tofu. This will add to the sticky texture of the dish, which will make it more appealing. Then you add the prickly ash powder to the surface of the finished product, and add the green onion for decoration.