By Arthur Hua
<== Click this to get to the recipe immediately!
What is Mapo Tofu?
Mapo Tofu, a dish that can test your ability to eat spicy foods, requires much more finesse than just throwing in a lot of chili peppers into a dish. It hails from the Sichuan cuisine, which is known for its dish’s bright red appearance. And it tastes as spicy as it looks! Eating it starts with causing beads of sweat to appear on your forehead, and progresses till your mouth feels numb, yet strangely satisfied. Sichuan dishes are the most posted region of dishes on Chinese social media, and this is mostly likely due to its awe-inspiring color red, which screams danger. Mapo Tofu is one of those dishes, with many different variations, making it a very adaptable dish, perfect for many occasions such as livening up a dinner party with friends, or just a simple meal at home. You can definitely count on this dish to catch eyes, and with its simple ingredients it’s easy to make at home!
The Mapo tofu Myth
Mapo Tofu originates in Chengdu, a town in the Sichuan region, it was created by Mrs. Chen during the Qing dynasty (1644-1911). There’s no exact record of its creation, however it has 2 different stories surrounding it’s creation. They both seem to confirm that the name Mapo tofu was named in reference to Mrs. Chen’s appearance. The first story is a simple one, that Mrs. Chen created a dish that got some traction and eventually spread across the region. I personally like the 2nd one more, where laborers and merchants would rest at her restaurant, and they would give her the ingredients, and by combining these ingredients and cooking many times, she created a way to cook the tofu which resulted in Mapo Tofu. If you are more curious about this topic you can read more about this and much more in this link!
Story time?
This dish was something I had to get used to eating, because I wasn’t a huge fan of spicy foods when I was younger. At home, cooking was treated as a way of discovering new flavors, so me and my parents were open to experimenting around with dishes, seeing if we could recreate food from stores at home. My mom especially would scoff at the prices restaurants would put on the dishes, saying “I could make this at home! And much healthier too!” So we did. However we saved dishes such as these for the holiday’s, so it would make a much more picturesque line up of dishes, with many colors. I love eating this dish with rice, because when the oily goodness mixes with the rice and emulsifies it giving the rice and mapo tofu mixture and viscous texture is simply just the best.
This is a recipe that took many trials and errors to get the right combination of correct substitutes for easy to obtain ingredients at home, but luckily, Sichuan spices are famous enough to be sold in most Chinese supermarkets, and are obtainable online, so enjoy cooking this dish and sharing it with family or friends!
Ingredients for Mom's Mapo Tofu
2 pork chops
3 cloves of garlic
2 inches of ginger or around 2 tablespoons of minced garlic
2 sticks of green onions
2 blocks of soft/silky tofu (This can be replaced with medium or firm tofu if you find that your tofu keeps breaking during the cooking process
Jar of Lou Gan Ma (very easily sourced at your local Asian market)
Soy sauce
Chinese vinegar ( I linked my favorite brand.)
Chili flakes
Salt & Pepper
Olive oil
Serves about 3 people
Preparing the Ingredients
Start by grounding the pork chops. You can buy it already grounded, but since the this dish is a simple one, the flavors of each ingredient makes a large impact on the overall dish.
After grounding the pork, leave it to the side and thinly slice the garlic into as many as you can.
Also mince the ginger
For the spring onions you want to cut the whiter parts of it in small slices, but it doesn't have to be too thin, while the greener areas should be cut in about quarter to half inch lengths.
Cut the tofu into smaller 1 inch cubes
At this point you can start cooking the rice in a rice cooker.
Now toss it together in a pan!
Pour enough oil into the pan to coat the bottom of it with a thin layer.
Heat until the oil starts smoking.
Toss in the garlic and ginger, and let them cook until fragrant around 30 sec to a min.
Throw in the ground pork and stir vigorously so no large clumps for, but smaller pieces harden together.
Make sure to keep the heat up, and keep stiring (Guess what, this is how stir fry got it's name!) until the most of the juices from the ground pork dries off.
Add in the Lao Gan Ma, around 2-3 tea spoons worth and stir with fiery passion.
Add in soy sauce and the Chinese vinegar, in around 1:2 ratio, enough to cover the bottom pan, yet starts foaming and boiling almost immediately.
Stir so that everything is covered in the combined sauces and add in the tofu and the white parts only of the green onions.
Now stir gently, and add the chili flakes and water till it reaches around half the volume of solid ingredients. Cover with a lid and wait until the water boils down to around half it's original.
Repeat adding water and let it boil down while stiring gently occasionally. Be Careful because you don't want to break the tofu. This is your chance to add in salt and pepper to taste.
Finally boil down to desired consistency, I prefer a slightly more viscous sauce so that when I add it onto my rice it adheres rather than seeps through.
And you're done! Crack open a cold Wang Lou Ji ( Chinese herbal tea drink know for being paired with these types of dishes) and enjoy!
Reflection
I chose a recipe blog because I believe food is very much a sensory experience, one that is much more dependent on smell, taste, and appearance. And the recipe blog allows me to convey that as much as possible by letting the people who read it gain the knowledge I would put in things like a podcast or a documentary such as background information around its culture or the dishes history, while also letting people make the dish at home. I chose Mapo Tofu because it’s the most intense in regards to the senses I mentioned before. Its bright red color, spicy taste and also spicy smell is guaranteed to leave a lasting impression on anyone who chooses to make my dish. The main picture I used was one my mom made when we were still trying to figure out the right spiciness level for this dish at home, and this was the most spicy we ever went, but it still turned out to be a nice red color. I also linked amazon links to ingredients you might not be able to find at your local grocery store, but can be found online or at asain markets. I also included a picture of Lao Gan Ma because it’s extremely iconic, and a lot of sichuan dishes use it. I ended up linking a youtube video to a Wang Lou Ji ad because a picture would throw off my structure too much and make it look ugly. I mainly followed the steps my mom told me for the instructions, and personal experience from making the dish myself. I wanted an actual experience focus from my paper, and since my paper had a lot on descriptions on what made certain regions "taste" I thought it would be fitting to allow people to recreate such taste in their own homes.