Lola’s Kitchen: Mapo Tofu Recipe

Posted July 14, 2017 by Lola in Lola's Kitchen / 8 Comments

Lola’s Kitchen is a feature on Lola’s Reviews where I talk about all things related to food, cooking and baking. These posts can be recipe posts, tens list posts about food or recipes or more discussion type posts about food. I love cooking and spend some time in the kitchen almost every day, so I wanted to give it a place on my blog as well. The banner for this feature is designed by Michelle from Limabean Designs.

Mapo Tofu is an dish featuring tofu and minced meat (or vegetarian minced meat in my case) in a spicy bean sauce. I made a less spicy variation myself as I don’t like spicy food. I really like this dish, the sauce has a rich flavor and a good taste, but isn’t spicy. It has a very unique taste and I like to make this dish once in a while. It also has tofu, which I’ve grown to really like lately and vegetarian minced meat as well. The two go surprisingly well together. And for the meat lovers, you can use real meat instead ofcourse. It does take some different sauce bottles to make this dish, so you might have to go to an Asian supermarket to find these first.

This recipe is based on Just One Cookbook Mapo Tofu recipe

Mapo-Tofu-close-up

Ingredients

  • Tofu – 1 block
  • Vegetarian minced meat or real minced meat – 1 package or about 175 gram
  • Red bell pepper – 2
  • Carrots – 3 large ones
  • Onions – 2
  • Garlic – 4 cloves
  • Ginger – 1 inch
  • Olive Oil
  • Water – a few tablespoons or about 1/2 cup
  • Soy sauce – 1 tablespoon
  • Vegetable stir fry sauce or oyster sauce – 2 tablespoons
  • Red Miso paste – 1 1/2 tablespoons
  • Soy bean sauce – 2 teaspoons
  • Spicy bean sauce – 2 teaspoons

This recipe feed about 3-4 people. I usually serve it with rice. I use both soy bean sauce and spicy bean sauce for this recipe as I like that flavor better and so it doesn’t get too spicy, you can also go for only one of these. When buying these in an Asian supermarket look for bean sauce or spicy bean sauce. The original recipe recommended chili bean sauce or broad bean paste. Below I posted a picture or the sauce ingredients I use.

Mapo-Tofu-sauce-ingredients

Method

  1. First cut the onion in small pieces. Grate the ginger and cut into very small pieces. Peel and press the garlic. Add everything to a wok with some olive oil. Set aside.
  2. Now prepare the other vegetables. Peel the carrots and slice them in small pieces and cut the red bell peppers into small parts.
  3. Heat the oil in the wok and bake the garlic, ginger and onion until the onion turns translucent.
  4. Now add the red bell pepper and carrots to the wok and bake for about 5 minutes. Then add some water and let slowly cook.
  5. In the meantime start preparing the tofu. Cut the tofu into small cubes. Heat some oil in a pan and bake for about 20 minutes, until crispy and brown. if you don’t mind soft tofu you can skip this step and keep the tofu apart until you have to add it to the sauce. But I think ti tasted better when baked first.
  6. While the tofu is baking start on the sauce. In a small bowl combine the miso paste, soy sauce, vegetable story fry sauce, soy bean paste and spicy bean sauce and mix well. Then ad dit to the wok with the veggies and stir well.
  7. Once the fou is almost done baking, start cooking the rice.
  8. Then add the minced meat to the wok with veggies and sauce. If using real minced meat bake it first before adding it to the wok.
  9. Now add the tofu to the wok as well and stir well. Once the rice is done, drain the water and then serve the mapo tofu with the rice.
  10. Enjoy your dinner!

Pictures

Mapo-Tofu-preparing

Mapo-Tofu

Mapo-Tofu-in-pan

What’s your favorite dish with tofu? Have you ever tried mapo tofu?

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8 responses to “Lola’s Kitchen: Mapo Tofu Recipe

    • It’s nice when in dishes like this you can adjust the spicy-ness to your taste. I can handle a very little bit of spicy, but it quickly become too much for me, so I am glad I managed to make this dish without it being too spicy :).

    • It really is a great dish. The way I make it it’s not really spicy, but you can easily adjust the spicyness to your liking :). Let me know how it turns out if you give it a try!

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