Mapo Tofu, the first version (麻婆豆腐)

The first of two Mapo Tofu recipes

Note from 2024: This recipe isn’t bad, but the updated one here is better.

Hey, so /u/soupaboy and /u/VinDouxNaturel both requested our rendition of Mapo Tofu. Despite how beloved this dish is, there’s a lot of really marginal recipes for Mapo Tofu floating around the internet (in both English and Chinese), so we figured it'd be a nice dish to try to demystify.

Before we get started, a note about what we’re looking for in the end product. We want intact cubes of tofu suspended in a thin sauce with a sheen of red oil on the top. Something like this or this is what I want in a mapo tofu, and what you'll see in good restaurants in Sichuan. You’ll see some home cooks in China shoot out varieties like this or this, which I don’t think is quite right. If you’re really looking for the second variety, I’d be happy to recommend some videos for that.

As before, I made a video to go with this. I think the videos are improving! So feel free to have a watch, and if any of you are video aficionados I’d love some feedback.

Basic Ingredients:

1. Soft Tofu (嫩豆腐), 230g. Note the tofu type. The biggest mistake I see people do is use the wrong tofu – if you’re in China, make sure to get this nen doufu (嫩豆腐) and not neizhi doufu (内酯豆腐). The latter is silken tofu, breaks down real easy, and is usually used in desserts. Now if you’re outside China I’m pretty sure you can get something called ‘soft tofu’, but reviewing Kenji’s Serious Eats recipe it appears that this is sometimes called ‘extra firm silken tofu’ (confused yet?). If you’re in doubt, and frantically comparing tofus at the supermarket… aim for the proper 'soft tofu' but slightly too firm is better than slightly too soft.

2. Sichuan Peppercorns (花椒), ½ Tablespoon. We’re gunna toast these and grind them in the first step of the recipe. You could sub for powder I suppose.

3. Minced Pork, 35g. Yeah, that ain’t a typo. We’re using a really small amount of mince here – the meat is used to flavor the tofu, this isn’t a meat-and-tofu stirfry. Personally I prefer pork to beef, as beef has a tendency to suck up oil while pork will slightly render out more oil. If you’re using beef mince, just get the fattiest that you can and keep an eye on the oil level.

4. Garlic gloves, 2-3. Minced.

5. Sichuan Chili Bean Paste (川式豆瓣酱), 1.5 TBSP. Minced to break down any bean chunks. A super critical ingredient - this is going to form the base for our sauce.

6. Chili/cayenne pepper powder, 0.25TSP to 2 TSP. I’m giving a range here because everyone’s everyone’s heat tolerance is a little difference. The flavor profile here is mala - we want Mapo Tofu’s heat to be balanced with the flavor of the Sichuan peppercorn. It should be a bit spicy but our goal isn’t to turn your mouth into a fireplace. In the recipe, we use a ½ teaspoon of really firey stuff from the Guizhou province – usually standard for me would be a teaspoon of normal Chinese chili powder. If you've got a super high heat tolerance so just go up to 2tsp.

7. ”Stock”, ¾ cup. We’re using the standard stock-plus-concentrate mixture here, using 1 tsp of concentrate (if you’re China-based, that’s called 鸡汁). If you’re making your own Asian style chicken stock at home though… go nuts, use that.

8. Caiziyou (菜籽油). Caiziyou is a sort of crude rapeseed oil that’s used extensively in Sichuan cooking. It has a really distinctive taste and works really well with Sichuan flavours. I figure you’re not going to be able to get this outside of China (I did a cursory search on Amazon), so sub canola oil until the day I get rich and make my millions by exporting this stuff.

Other Ingredients:

1. Rice Wine (料酒), 1 tsp. In the West this is usually called Shaoxin Wine.

2. Light Soy Sauce (生抽), 1 tsp.

3. Sugar, 1 tsp.

4. Dark Chinese Vinegar (陈醋), ½ tsp. This is added near the end of cooking.

5. Cornstarch, 1 tsp. Slurry of 1 tsp cornstarch and a TBSP of water.

6. Sesame Oil, 1 tsp. Toasted of course, to finish it off.

Process:

1. Toast and grind your Sichuan peppercorns. This is going to be on medium-low heat for a couple minutes (dry pan, no oil of course). You’ll know it’s done once the Sichuan peppercorns are aromatic and leave little oil specks in the wok, as shown here in the video. This is gunna really heighten the flavor and numbingness of the peppercorns. Grind those up in a morter-and-pestle or a coffee grinder. If you have neither of those things you can also be a hobo, put them in a plastic bag, and pound em with a hammer (I spent an embarrassingly long quantity of my life doing that).

2. Cut and simmer your tofu. Cut your tofu into small cubes, about a half inch. Then toss your tofu cubes in a pot of salted water (we used 2 tsp of salt in that smaller pot) that’s barely simmering. This does three things: first, the salt water gets out some moisture from the tofu and firms it up. Second, it’ll get out the so-called ‘grassy’ taste from the tofu; and third, it’ll slightly season the tofu. Simmer that for 2-3 minutes, then take the pot off the heat but continue to soak the tofu til we’re ready to use it.

3. Fry your mince. This is going to be the reguoliangyou (hot pot, cool oil) method, which gives you the chance to break up the mince with your spatula. Fry for a couple minutes on medium high heat.

4. Fry your chili bean paste. Add your chili bean paste in with your mince, frying on medium heat. As this cooks, the chili bean paste is going to create the hongyou by infusing the oil - that characteristic red oil in Sichuan cooking. Note that unlike some other recipes, we’re not going to need to add any chili oil at the end – all of the red oil is going to be from the Chili bean paste. Move on to the next step once your oil looks something like this, which was about two to three minutes for us.

5. Fry your minced garlic and your chili powder. Add these ingredients and fry it for about a minute.

6. Add the stock, season, and start to simmer. Add in your stock (or “stock” in our case), the soy sauce, the Shaoxing cooking wine (料酒), and the sugar. Taste it – it should feel slightly undersalted at this juncture. Allow it to simmer for a couple minutes before we add in the tofu.

7. Drain your tofu, then add it to your pot. Make sure you’re not getting any extra water in there.

8. Let the tofu simmer in the liquid as it’s reducing. Bring the heat back up to medium-high to get a hefty simmer going on (basically a small boil). Stir the tofu by gently pushing it back and forth with your spatula. At about the 3 minute mark, the liquid should start to be boiling away rapidly and starting to resemble a thin sauce. For ours, we timed it to be 3 and a half minutes in this step.

9. Season the sauce, then thicken it up with your slurry. Remember our toasted-and-ground Sichuan peppercorns from earlier? This is where we’re gunna add them in. If you do it too early you’ll end up with this brackish-black colored sauce instead of the red-oil that we’re looking for. It’ll be plenty numbing I promise. Also add in that half teaspoon of dark vinegar, stir and cook for about 30 seconds. Hit it with your slurry (1tsp cornstarch mixed with 1 TBSP water) to thicken, and turn off the heat.

10. Stir in some sesame oil, then put in a plate and garnish. Make sure you get all that red-oil-deliciousness out from the bottom of the pan. Sprinkle some green onion slices (or cilantro) for maximum prettiness.

A note about where you can screw up: The biggest variable that I can only go so far control to control in the recipe is how thin/thick your sauce ends up. This is going to be simmering down and reducing away with the tofu cooking inside of it. And depending on your stove, your wok, your tofu… the end result after the four minutes of cooking might end up looking a touch too ‘soupy’.

First, remember that we want it to be a bit soupy, but don’t despair. Taste your tofu and your soup. Does it taste good? If so, just plate and take leave some of the extra sauce that you don’t want in a separate bowl.
Then, after a few minutes that red oil – the hongyou - is gunna rise to the top. Skim it off and drizzle it over the mapo tofu. Nobody will be the wiser. Just do me a favor and don’t continue cooking the tofu – it’d be at a real risk of breaking down into mush if you keep it on the heat too long.

Alternatively, maybe your sauce is looking way too thick. Turn the heat down to the lowest it could possibly go and add a tablespoon or two of water. Should thin it right out.

A note about meat: If you’re using beef mince instead of pork that’s perfectly fine, but make sure you’re getting the fattiest beef you can. Also, in this step at around 4:17 in the video, take a look at the oil quantity. Add some to your beef if there’s not quite enough.

Furthermore, don’t make the mistake of thinking “meat in a tofu dish, brilliant! I’m gunna quadruple the meat amount because I love meat!” I’ve been there, I thought that way for a bit too.

But it’s an inferior dish if it’s got a big pile of mince – I mean, who wants to eat ground meat in thick-soup-ish form anyway? I know it feels a little weird, but the meat is for flavoring. Think of it as like anchovies in a Caesar salad. You want some anchovies in a nice Caesar salad, and if you really like anchovies you can add some more. But if someone tossed you a plate of half-anchovies-half-lettuce, you wouldn’t really want that as a Caesar salad, no?

To that end, some recipes I see online have way too much meat – the proper ratio that Sichuan cooks use is 10:1 tofu to meat. But because I do like meat, the 7:1 ratio that we use here is also good.

A note about oil/mince: A couple people have tried to recreate this recipe and have reported issues with not being able to get the hongyou (the red oil). We believe that it is likely due to the pre-packaged mince that is available in the United States - it's quite dry, and a bit dissimilar to fresh mince. We have two idea on how to overcome this problem:

1. Steph's Idea: Steph likes to cook Southeast Asian food, and a YouTube channel that she likes to check out is "Hot Thai Kitchen" (nice channel by the way). The host of that channel cooks Thai food but is based in Canada IIRC, and she has a ton of tips on how to cook Asian food in the West. Apparently (though we can't find the video), a good way to overcome the dry-ness of packaged mince is to massage a bit of water (~1 TBSP here) into the mince before frying it and then drain the excess. This sort of makes sense to us as in Cantonese food uses the same trick to stir-fry beef, which is notoriously lean/dry in China.

2. Chris's Idea: I have never tried this 'massage water into mince' trick so I have a tough time wholeheartedly recommending it. First best solution, I feel, would be simply buying a cut of fatty pork and mincing it by hand - you should not get the dry-oil-sponge issue. Alternatively, if you can't or don't want to mince by hand, I would fry your mince first, then remove the mince - make sure you have ~3TBSP of oil in the pot after and continue to fry the doubanjiang. Add back your mince when you add the tofu.

If those ideas don't work for ya, just skip the damn mince. It's better with mince, but getting that red-oil is vastly more integral to the dish than the meat flavoring.