Mabo-dofu (Japanese-style mapo tofu)

So mabo-dofu is the Japanese take on the classic Chinese Mapo tofu. The Japanese version has the spiciness level very much downgraded, and uses a lot of ingredients you’d find in a regular Japanese kitchen like miso. I haven’t tried meal-prepping this one (not too sure how well the soft tofu would freeze) but it’s fairly simple to make so I don’t mind. I’m mindful of eating a lot of vegetables so I have modified it a bit.

Ingredients

Makes 2 servings (or maybe a bit more).

The veg

• Diced shiitake mushrooms (maybe like 10? I buy a pack of them)
• Couple bunches of spinach

The protein

• 200g ground pork/beef mix (optional / can reduce)
• Can of chickpeas (optional)
• 200-300g soft silken tofu 400g (I usually look for one with the kanji 絹)

The sauce

• 1.5 Tbspn doubanjiang sauce
• 2 Tbspn Oyster sauce
• 1.5 Tbspn miso paste
• 1 Tbspn soy sauce
• 4 Tbspn mirin
• 1 Tspn sesame oil
• 8 Tbspn water

Nearly everything above is just ingredients you’ll always be using in a Japanese kitchen so you may already have it in stock. The only two outliers are doubanjiang sauce and oyster sauce.

When I first try a new recipe, I find ingredient shopping to be a bit stressful because I’ll need to a) translate the ingredients into Japanese to try and find them and that’s b) assuming they are normally stocked in Japanese supermarkets to begin with. Luckily mabo-dofu is pretty popular so you’ll have no issues here.

For doubanjiang sauce - you’ll be looking for the kanji “豆板醤”. The one I bought has a picture of mabo-dofu on the label which makes it easy to spot. If you buy a Japanese brand, it’s a fair bit less spicy than the real Chinese version. So be careful if you swap out sauce brands later as you may end up making something a lot spicier than you were expecting.

The oyster sauce will be in katakana like オイスターソース. Conveniently my local supermarket has both of these stocked right next to each other, so I suppose they are often used in combination.

Misc

• 2 cloves garlic
• 1 Tbspn neutral oil
• Cornstarch or potato starch

Instructions

As with most things I cook, the original recipe came from the ever-useful Just One Cookbook.

1. Saute 2 cloves diced garlic and 1 tbspn neutral oil in pan.
2. (Optionally) add ground meat to pan and cook until it’s no longer pink - recently I’ve been going with a vegetarian version so I skip this

Personal preference but I don’t like a super meaty taste, so if I do add the meat, once its cooked through, I go back and spoon out all the meat fat that have accumulated.

3. Add in diced mushrooms and let them cook until they start to shrink
4. Mix together the sauce and add to pan.
5. (Optional) add in spinach leaves
6. (Optional) add chickpeas for fun
7. Drain tofu / dice it, and also add to pan.

The final key thing here is to not mix too much once you’ve added the tofu, because otherwise you end up with tofu that looks just like the ground meat (all crumbled up). With the tofu, the aim is just to get it all heated up, so once I plop in the tofu I cover it in a lid to try and heat it up, and just geeently occasionally stir it to try and get the sauces distributed.

Then if it’s looking a bit watery, you can add cornstarch:

7. Mix 1 tbspn of cornstarch or potato starch with 1 tbspn water, and mix into sauce.

Chickpeas is definitely not in the traditional recipe for either the Chinese or Japanese versions, but I like chickpeas so why not? And it turned out alright when I added it.