Mapo Tofu Meat Sauce: Make once, use it x5
6 recipes plus a video for enjoying the Chinese icon
We all have busy schedules and the Holy Grail is to have a trusty recipe that you can use throughout the week without getting tired of it. Last Monday, while we were out on one of our afternoon walks, my husband asked, “What are you thinking of cooking?”
“Mapo tofu,” I said.
“Okay, but it’s been a while since we had pasta,” he countered. That was true but I’d been simmering on something.
“I have an idea about a new mapo with noodles,” I said. He was game.
Instead of my go-to conventional mapo recipe, I wanted to riff on a dish that a Sichuan family in Chengdu showed me in 2010. That night, I came up with a handy recipe that you can take in many fun directions with minimal effort.
You may ask: What took her so long?
In 2010, I was researching tofu and through a generous friend of a generous friend, I met Zhong Yi, a Chengdu University graduate student in Chinese literature and culture. Along with two travel companions, food stylist Karen Shinto and former Gourmet magazine editor Lillian Chou, we explored the city’s Chengdu markets, temples and cafes with Zhong Yi.
I also harbored a secret objective — to cook with locals. After getting to know Zhong Yi, I boldly asked if her family would teach us their tofu dishes. It was September and her family was celebrating the annual Moon Festival with a big cook-in. She generously said, “Of course! Join us for our party.”
HOORAY. Pay dirt.
Zhong Yi’s parents arrived from Chongqing with a delicious spicy tofu sausage containing opaline bits of pork fat. Her aunts and uncle prepared a feast, including mapo tofu. Lillian captured the day in photographs (below), Karen taped videos, and I took copious notes. From a small and efficiently equipped kitchen with a 2-burner stove, thirteen (13!) dishes quickly emerged. Zhong Yi’s grandma tasted and approved each one.
As things wound down, Zhong Yi’s playful aunt (above) surprised us with an extra dish. She boiled some very skinny wheat noodles (think angel hair size), scooped up the meaty saucy part of the leftover mapo tofu and put it atop the noodles. “Dan dan mian [dan dan noodles],” she said, handing us a bowl of the impromptu snack. She gifted us another recipe to extend mapo tofu but I never included it in Asian Tofu due to a lack of space to explain the outlier context.
13 Years of Gestation
That meal stuck with me. I’ve been thinking about repurposing mapo tofu ever since. Developing recipes and writing Ever-Green Vietnamese put me onto a healthy path to leading a vegetable-forward, low-meat lifestyle. I’m often thinking up ways to prioritize plants in my cooking.
Last Monday, wanting to please myself and my husband, I made a mapo tofu meat sauce to go atop noodles. I didn’t leave out the tofu like Zhong Yi’s family did. Instead, I manipulated tofu so it melded with the ground meat, resulting in a versatile, bold flavored sauce. Its big flavor was super satisfying and we surprisingly had lots leftover.
The next day and for the rest of the week, I started playing with leftover meat sauce. I eventually came up with these uses for new mapo-filled foods:
Oven-Fried and Poached Mapo Wontons — A local Chinese-owned dumpling shop had mapo tofu dumplings on its menu so I gave that a whirl. Each little dumpling was a burst of salty, spicy goodness.
Mapo Puffs — Rich puff pastry needs bold fillings. Mapo performed great and the puff pastry baked up into delicate delights that would be great for a party, picnic, or potluck. Cut them in half to serve, if you want.
Mapo Pot-stickers — On Friday, with still more Mapo Meat Sauce on hand, I pan-fried my dumplings as potstickers and served them with a salad for lunch.
Usually when I recipe develop, my husband is tired in the final rounds of testing. This time he said, “Even after all these dishes, your sauce is not boring!”. That’s because the mapo meat sauce reappeared in many fun guises. It also keeps well so you don’t have to hurry up to use it up.
All these years thinking about mapo tofu and its potential led to this — a collection of six (6) recipes with a downloadable PDF plus a video. First, some words about the star ingredient, tofu.
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