麻婆豆腐Mapo tofu
Silken tofu, gently braised in a meat-and-black-bean sauce, thickened twice, and finished with ground Sichuan pepper for the má (tingling) that gives the dish its name. The technique that matters most is what you must not do: you do not stir the tofu, and you do not let it scramble.
Technique notes
This is a braise at the small end — a short one, where the liquid is a thin sauce and the tofu is the flesh of the dish. The meat is there for depth (the Chengdu version traditionally uses minced beef; pork is the home-kitchen swap), the fermented black beans for the salty-umami that carries, and the fresh Sichuan pepper (ground at the end, never cooked) for the má. The thickening is the classic double-splash that the sauces 101 article covers: two small pours of cornflour slurry, each one integrated before the next, so the sauce thickens to a nappe-thin coat rather than a glue. The stir-fry behind the meat-and-doubanjiang stage is the same technique as the wok heat article, just run at a lower speed.
Equipment
- Wok or 28 cm (11 in) heavy skillet
- Flat-bottomed strainer or wide sieve
- Small bowl for the cornflour slurry
- Grinder or mortar for the Sichuan pepper
Ingredients
- 400 g (about 14 oz) silken or soft-set tofu, firm enough to cut into 2 cm cubes without falling apart
- 100 g (about 3½ oz) lean minced pork (or beef, if you can get it at the Asian fishmonger)
- 10 g (about 1 tsp) fermented black beans (suanyuan or douchi), roughly minced
- 10 g (1 tsp) doubanjiang (broad bean paste), the chili-oil fraction drained off if it's very hot
- 5 g garlic, minced
- 5 g fresh ginger, minced
- 10 g (about 2 dried) dried red chilies, halved and deseeded — optional, for color and a little heat
- 15 ml (1 tbsp) cooking wine (Shaoxing or dry sherry)
- 5 ml (1 tsp) light soy sauce
- 150 ml (⅔ cup) chicken stock, warmed
- 5 g (1 tsp) cornflour mixed with 15 ml (1 tbsp) cold water, for the slurry — you'll use it in two halves
- 3 g ground Sichuan pepper (fresh if you can get it), for the finish — this is the má
- 2 ml (a good drizzle) toasted sesame oil
- 10 g scallion greens, cut on the diagonal, for the top
- Salt to taste — the black beans and soy already carry a lot
Method
- Cube the tofu into 2 cm pieces and set them in the strainer. Bring a pot of water to a boil, add 2 g of salt and 5 ml of vinegar, and drop the tofu in for 60–90 seconds — just long enough to firm the surface, not to cook the center. Drain well. The vinegar is what makes the tofu hold together when it hits the sauce, and the salt is a small pre-season. If your tofu is the very softest silken kind, skip the blanch and handle it with two spatulas; the method below still works.
- Warm the stock, mix the slurry, mince the black beans, and have the ground pepper, sesame oil, and scallion on the bench. Everything else in this recipe moves once the wok is hot, so the mise en place matters.
- Heat the wok or pan over medium-high with 15 ml of oil. Add the mince and break it up with the spatula. Cook until it's just past white and starting to dry out at the edges — you want the meat to give up its fat, not to brown hard, so drop to medium if it's going dark fast.
- Push the meat to one side. Into the other side, add the black beans, the garlic, the ginger, the doubanjiang, and the dried chilies. Cook 30 seconds until the doubanjiang gives up a ring of red oil and the garlic stops being raw. Add the cooking wine and let it hiss off, then stir everything back together. This is the stage the stir-fry article is about: aromatics in hot fat, moving constantly, the oil at the browning window.
- Add the warm stock and bring to a simmer. Here is the rule. Ease the tofu into the sauce with a spatula or your hands — don't pour it in, don't drop it, just lower each piece in. Then leave it alone. The pan does the moving: once the sauce is at a gentle simmer, give the wok a quarter-turn now and then to nudge the pieces around, never a stir. The tofu will coat itself in the sauce as the liquid bubbles around it. Simmer 3–4 minutes. If you stir it now the cubes shear and you're making tofu mush with extra steps.
- First splash: tip in half the slurry, in a thin stream, and let it incorporate — 30 seconds is enough — the sauce should start to coat the back of a spoon. Second splash: the other half, same motion. This is the double-splash technique from the sauces 101 article: one big pour gives you glue, two small pours give you nappe. Once the sauce is clinging and no longer running off the tofu, it's done.
- Switch off the heat. Add the ground Sichuan pepper and the sesame oil and fold them in — the pepper is má (tingling) and the oil is xiāng (fragrant), and both are killed by heat, so they go in at the end, not in. Top with the scallion and serve straight into a bowl of rice and the whole thing at the table.
Common failures
- Tofu is in fragments, not cubes. You stirred it, or it wasn't blanched. The blanch in step 1 is what firms the surface; the "no stir, quarter-turn" rule in step 5 is what keeps the cubes intact in the sauce. Both steps are there for a reason.
- Sauce is thin and watery at the table. One splash of slurry, or the pan was too cool when you poured it and the starch didn't set. The double-splash is the fix: two small pours, each integrated, at a simmer, not a boil.
- Sauce is a rubbery glue. The slurry went in at a full boil and set before it spread. Simmer, not boil, when you pour.
- No tingling, just ordinary salt-and-chili. The Sichuan pepper was cooked in (it goes in at the end, after the heat is off), or it's old and the oils have gone off, or you used black pepper. The má is the point of the dish — fresh-ground Sichuan pepper, added at the end.
- Doubanjiang is bitter and the oil is black. The aromatics went in at too high a heat and the bean paste cooked past the point where it's fragrant into the point where it's bitter. Medium, moving, the red ring of oil is your cue to add the wine.
Variations & substitutions
- Vegetarian — drop the mince and replace it with 100 g of shiitake, sliced thin and fried off in the same fat first. The black beans and doubanjiang carry the umami in their place. The má is unchanged.
- Milder — this is already a mild version; drop the dried chilies and you have a dish that's fragrant and slightly sweet with the má doing the work. The doubanjiang is still there, so "mild" is relative to what you're used to.
- No doubanjiang — it's a specialty item; substitute 5 g of red miso (mixed with a little of the stock so it dissolves) and up the black beans to 15 g. You lose the specific fermented-bean-heat character and gain a rounder umami. It's not the same dish, but it's a good dish.
- Leftover sauce over rice — if there's sauce left at the bottom of the pan, it's the best part. Pour it over a bowl of plain white rice while it's still hot and eat the rice with it.
What to serve with it
This is a rice dish, end of story. The sauce is thinned to a nappe specifically so it runs off the tofu and onto the grain and gets eaten with the spoon. If you want a second element, a steamed green vegetable on the side keeps the plate from being entirely red, and a simple cucumber-and-garlic salad cuts the má for a minute. A cold rice wine (Shaoxing or a pale Japanese honjozo) works well with the pepper.
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