Very excited to be trying his recipe.
A question – unless I am missing something, the Tofu is only cooked briefly at the end. There is no specific time given.
Woks of life gives it 3-5 minutes while Kenjis own serious eats recipe boils it seperately prior to adding. His YouTube Mapo Tofu has it in the microwave.
Am I missing something here? How long should I give the Tofu to cook after I’ve added it in?
by sertorioustb
7 Comments
Chinese Cooking Demystified has a recipe on Reddit that calls for boiling the tofu for 3 minutes in water and setting aside. Then the tofu is simmered with all the ingredients until 1/3 reduced, about 7-10 minutes
I second Chinese demystified. It’s my go-to recipe.
You’re just heating the tofu. I see no need to preheat it at all and I make mapo often.
It’s soft tofu. Just heat it until it’s your desired temperature.
I haven’t made this exact recipe so can’t speak to this in particular, but soft tofu doesn’t really need to be cooked so adding it at the end just to heat it through makes sense to me
Cooking it well, even for firm tofu doesn’t really add any flavor. Don’t over think it.
If you cook it a whole lot in the work it starts to get damaged.. which is also not a big deal.
I’ve made this a bunch of times, and also took a Milk Street class with Kenji where we cooked this dish. Just toss it in at the end – there’s no other cooking. It comes out great!