Ma Po Tofu
When I was a vegetarian I lived on tofu, but back then I wasn't into cooking a whole lot so I always just had different tofu and veggie stir fry dishes. I tried Ma Po Tofu at PF Changs several years ago but never thought about recreating it myself. Well now that I absolutely love to cook and experiment I decided to try it.
I looked at a few recipes online, including this one, and also got a recipe from Joelen on thenest.com (she has recipes for everything - she's amazing so check out her blog). Below is what I did:
Ingredients
- 1 block of extra firm tofu, pressed and cut into cubes (pressing tofu between towels for 30 minutes releases all of the extra water and allows it to soak up more flavors when cooking)
- 10 oz low sodium chicken broth
- 2 green onions, chopped
- 3 cloves of garlic
- 2 tbsp low sodium soy sauce
- 2 tsp chili sauce/chili paste (I used Hunan Chili Sauce)
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 1 tsp cornstarch
- Rice
Directions
- Heat olive oil in a pan; add onions and garlic, saute for a few minutes
- Add tofu and half of the chili sauce; cook for 4-5 minutes
- Add 2/3 of the chicken broth, the rest of the chili sauce, and the soy sauce; let simmer for 5 minutes
- Mix the remaining chicken broth with the cornstarch; add slowly to the pan to thicken your sauce
- Serve over rice
WOW - this was good! So simple, too. It had a good amount of heat and a ton of flavor. I will definitely make this one again. I also think I'll be able to make it with shrimp for Jon.
I'd recommend this to anyone who has never had tofu but would love to try it, or to anyone looking for something new and easy to do with tofu! Enjoy.
