Iron Chef’s Mapo Tofu Recipe (麻婆豆腐)

Hi there. It’s Mrs. Wada back on duty. Are you familiar with Iron Chef? It’s a Japanese TV program broadcasted in the early 90s. I’ve happened to see the Iron Chef of Chinese on TV introducing his mapo tofu recipe. I was a bit excited to see it because I was kinda getting sick of instant mapo that we usually have and this recipe looked easy, so I decided to try it out and share it here.

Iron Chef’s Mapo Tofu Recipe (麻婆豆腐)

Ingredients

(Four servings)
tofu (1 pack) – 400g
spring onions – 1/3
ground pork meat – 100g

[A] doubanjiang (豆板醤) – 1 tbsp
tenmenjiang (甜麺醤) – 1 tbsp
dausijiang (豆鼓醤) – 1 tsp
minced garlic (or in tube) – 1 tbsp
chili powder (adjust as you like) – 1 tsp

chicken broth – 150ml
potato starch – 2-3 tbsp (mixed with little water)
sichuan pepper (花椒粉) – little
cooking oil – little
cooking sake – 1 tbsp
soy sauce – 1 tbsp
pepper – little
salt – little

 

Instruction

The Iron Chef says that the key is turn the heat off every step.(when adding ingredients)

1. Boil Tofu with a pinch of salt, turn the heat off and leave it.

 

2. Pour cooking oil onto another fry-pan, fry the minced meat until it turns brown.

 

3. Add spices [A] and cook until oil turns red (color from spices).

 

4. Pour chicken broth and cook again until it starts boiling.

 

5. Add the tofu from the other pan and cook it for a few minutes. Keep stirring not to let it burn. Now pour soy sauce, cooking sake, and a pinch of salt and pepper.

 

6. Pour potato starch-water mixture little by little twice or three times to make it thick (keep stirring and cook well). Sprinkle little cooking oil and done!

 

Tada! Looks goody huh? Some Sichuan pepper would give it extra spiciness as well (it’s like Japanese pepper, sansyo).

 

Lastly

How was it? It goes great with rice or noodles. Please try it!

See you around!