If you've eaten at a Sichuan restaurant, chances are you've had some version of mapo tofu. Whether or not you enjoyed it depends on your spice tolerance and, of course, the quality of the restaurant in question. In my mind, the champions of mapo tofu are the cooks at Masterpiece in Duluth, where you can find yourself eating countless spoonfuls of the stuff far after the sane part of your brain shouts, "Stop! Too much spice!" It is the Sichuan equivalent of eating the spicy oil-soaked bread underneath Nashville hot chicken.
If you haven’t had the pleasure of eating such a dish, mapo tofu consists of tofu stir-fried with a small amount of ground pork or beef, lots of chile oil, fermented black beans, some kind of onion, and Sichuan peppercorns. These peppercorns are key, as they counter the spice in the chile oil. Typically, the dish is made using custard-like silken tofu, a far cry from the crumbly firm and extra-firm blocks that make a more common appearance in American tofu dishes.
Like most stir-fries, mapo tofu is a quick-cooking dish, easily suitable for a 5:30 Challenge, except for its relatively long ingredient list. In addition to those aforementioned ingredients, it needs aromatics like ginger and garlic, plus soy sauce and vinegar to add salinity and brightness.
The workaround? Make the dish vegetarian and employ a Sichuan-style seasoning sauce, such as the Oriental Wok Sichuan Chili Spicy Ma La Sauce. This magical sauce — a paste, really — contains just about everything you need for a shortcut mapo tofu, short of the tofu of course, and a few building blocks for a sauce.
If lots of heat is what you crave, though, grab a bottle of prepared chile oil to drizzle over the top with abandon. Just make sure to pair it with plenty of rice.
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