How to Make the Most Authentic Szechuan Mapo Tofu 麻婆豆腐 | Chinese Homestyle Cookery

Mapo Tofu is probably the most famous Chinese dish in the world. But do you know why it's called Mapo Tofu? Today I'm gonna tell you the story of Mapo Tofu, what makes a good Mapo Tofu and how you can make the most authentic version at home. Dating back to the 1800s in Qing Dynasty China, there was a small restaurant called Chen's It was Chen's wife who was the chef of the restaurant and the regulars of the restaurant loved the way she cooked tofu with ground beef and spicy broth. Mrs. Chen had a freckle face and customers just called her the freckle lady. In Sichuan dialect, it was Ma Po. The dish was so famous among the locals and the people just called the dish Mapo Tofu. Who would have thought This dish has become one of the most iconic Chinese dishes and probably the most famous tofu dish in the world. So everyone knows that this is a spicy hot and savory tofu dish. But what makes a good Mapo Tofu? Let me show you with my favorite anime series when I was a kid, Chuuka Ichiban. Of course, this dish is super popular in Japan too. As you can see, in general, there's five elements that's important to the dish. Numb, spicy, color, aroma, and hotness. There's a sixth element that can elevate the dish from good to great. I'll review what it is when we're cooking. Enough with the introduction, let's start with the ingredients. If you look close enough, the ingredients list is almost identical to the one of twice-cooked pork. Two things that I want to mention here is that for the best texture, you'd want to use soft tofu. Also, I'm using another more aged version of doubanjiang from pixian, which gives the dish more depth of flavor. I also have a couple tablespoon of potato starch. We're making a slurry one to three ratio of starch to water. You may also use cornstarch. We need a slurry later to thicken the sauce. The first cooking step is to blanch the tofu. This step is crucial as it eliminates some of the raw flavor of tofu and prepare the tofu for later. We want to cut the tofu to about two centimeter cubes. To blanch the tofu, bring a pot of water to a slow boil. Add in about 10 grams of salt. Carefully add in the tofu and let it simmer. You want to turn down the heat and the tofu should be jiggling a little bit in the water. If the heat is too high, the tofu might break. When the tofu are simmered in salty water, the protein in the tofu will firm up a little bit so the tofu cubes can retain their shape. Also, it'll draw out some of the water in the soft tofu and replace them with salt water so that the tofu are more flavorful. If you skip the blanching step, the inside of the tofu may still be quite bland even though with the heavy sauce. Simmer for about 10 minutes. Then, you can turn the heat off and leave the tofu in the water for later. Next step, we mince up the aromatics. Chop up the green onion, ginger, and garlic. If you have green garlic, it's best to use that in place of green onion. Then, we need to chop the doubanjiang if you're using this aged kind. You may skip this if you're using the one in a jar with oil. We do this because in this dry doubanjiang, there's whole broad bean and chili pieces. We want to chop them up so they release the most flavor. Crab is done and we're ready to cook. Heat the oil up and fry the ground beef. Break them apart as much as possible and be patient at this step. We want to fry the ground beef to golden brown This is the sixth element of the dish. Texture. The contrast of crispy ground beef, the soft tofu, along with the numbing spicy sauce is like a symphony in your mouth. When the ground beef is golden brown, add in the ginger, garlic, chopped doubanjiang, douchi, and ground chili. Fry until fragrant and the oil turns red and we can add in water or stock. When the braising liquid comes to a boil, we can turn down the heat and gently add in the tofu. You want the water level just about the same as the tofu. When nudging the tofu, be extra gentle or you'll break the tofu. We want to simmer on low heat for about 10 minutes so that the flavor can get into the tofu. 10 minutes later, crank up the heat, sprinkle some white pepper, and we can start to thicken the sauce using our slurry. The starch may sink to the bottom at the time so you might need to mix it again. Add in one spoon at a time and swirl it around. An indicator of the perfect consistency is the size of the bubbles. In Chinese chef language, you want a bubble to be about the same size as a fish eye. That's when you should stop the thickening process and start plating. Mix in half of the green onion to cook them a bit and we can ladle the tofu out. Sprinkle the ground citron peppercorn and rest of the green onion on top and we're done. This is another dish that's perfect for white rice. It's saucy, numb, spicy, hot, fragrant, has nice balance of texture. You can enjoy this dish on all occasions and all seasons. That's why it's such a great dish. Alright, that's it for Mapo Tofu. I hope you enjoy the recipe and give it a try at home. If you have any questions, leave them in the comment below and don't forget to like and subscribe for more videos. Thanks for watching What's Chill Cooking and see you next time.