Fish Fragrant Tofu Chinese tofu recipe
I’ve mentioned so many benefits of tofu in my previous blog post and here is another tofu recipe that I want to share with you today.
“Fish fragrant tofu” (魚香豆腐) is one of many famous dishes from Sichuan cuisine. It has “fish” in the name of it but without fish in this dish. It’s called “fish fragrant” because the ingredients for this dish are usually used when cooking fish but people use it for cook tofu, eggplant and other dishes.
There is a story about this fish fragrant dish. A long time ago in Sichuan, there was a family who were really serious when It came to cooking fish. They will use ginger, spring onion, garlic, mince, chilli bean sauce and other ingredients to cook with fish. One day, the lady of this family didn’t want to waste the ingredients so she used the ingredients to cook another dish. She was however realy nervous that it wouldn’t taste nice and her husband wouldn’t like it.
Her husband came home while she was thinking about what she should explain to her husband later about this dish. Her husband was so hungry from work he didn’t wait for dinner to start and literally just took a few bites of this dish. He asked his wife: ”Oh, this dish is the most tasty dish that I ever had in my life, how did you do it?” She told him how she cooked it and they gave the name of this dish “fish fragrant fry (魚香炒)”. This is how “fish fragrant” this name came from.
People who are vegetarian can also cook this dish but just without using any mince. You can adjust the amount of chilli and chilli bean sauce if you prefer your food more or less spicy.
As people who follow my Facebook page will know, I recently bought a pink knife bag. I really like anything that’s pink and when I saw this bag online I just had to buy it! Here are some of photos of my new pink knife bag.
Credit: All photos were taken by Chris at: http://www.chrisradleyphotography.com
Don’t you think this is the cutest knife bag ever!
Fish Fragrant Tofu Chinese tofu recipe
Ingredients
Ingredients
- 2 boxes tofu around 692g, I bought it from a regular supermarket
- 1 spring onion chop finely. I used half for the sauce and the other half for garnish
- 2 cloves garlic chop finely
- 2 slices ginger chop finely
- 1 chili chop finely
- 100 g beef or pork mince I used beef mince in this dish
Seasonings
- 1 tbsp chili bean sauce
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tbsp soy sauce
- 2 drops sesame oil approximately
- 1 cup water
Marinade for mince
- 1 tsp sugar
- 1 tbsp soy sauce
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 2 pinches white pepper powder approximately
Instructions
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Marinade mince with sugar, soy sauce, salt and white pepper powder for 15 minutes.
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Remove the packaging from the tofu and cut it into 1.5 cm thick pieces.
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Heat a wok with 1 tablespoon of oil and stir fry the spring onion, garlic, ginger and chilli for 30 seconds.
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Add mince into the wok and keep stir-frying it until the mince is cooked.
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Add chilli bean sauce to stir-fry it for 30 seconds. Add rest of the seasonings into wok and bring it to boil.
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Add tofu into wok and gently push them into seasonings and turn the gas power to the lowest and simmer it for 10 minutes.
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Place the tofu onto a plate and pour some sauce on top. Sprinkle the rest of the chopped spring onion on top and it’s ready to serve.
Yay! I love fish and I love tofu sooooo much! Thanks for sharing!
Hello Jun,
Thank you very much for your comment. 😀
This looks really delish. I will soon try!
Thank you very much, Sherlly. I hope you will give it a go soon and if you got any problem or question about the procedures please don’t hesitate to ask me. 🙂
Hi Liv
what a wonderful way to prepare tofu! I am always looking for ways to prepare tofu for my girls!
And that pink knife bag….tres chic!!
although I don’t think it would work for me, even in an all girls school!
Have a wonderful holiday season!
Dennis
Thanks for sharing this recipe (and its origins, too). I’m always looking for good tofu recipes and this will fit the bill nicely at home. Looks wonderful!
This looks delicious. Can’t wait to try it, it looks like my grandmother’s yummy home cooking!
Hi Kimberly,
Many thanks for your kind comment. 🙂 Grandmother’s home cooking are the best in the world. I love my grandmother’s cooking too. lol
Hi, this looks delicious and I plan to make it soon. I was wondering, is this similar to Ma Po Tofu?
Hi Liz, thanks for your comment. Fish Fragrant Tofu and Ma Po Tofu are similar in that they have tofu but the Ma Po Tofu has Sichuan pepper in it, so it can be really spicy (it will make your tongue go numb 😀 ). Fish Fragrant Tofu can be a little spicy depending on taste but not to the same extent as Ma Po Tofu. Please check out my Ma Po Tofu recipe here to see the difference: https://eggwansfoododyssey.com/2010/03/20/ma-po-tofu/.
Thanks. Liv.
Hi there, I made this recipe last night with a side of salad. It was super delicious! Only thing I changed was instead of using a chili I used Red Pepper Flakes and since my local supermarket didn’t have chili bean sauce I used Black Bean Sauce. So for the next time I hope to find the correct ingredients so I know how it actually taste. All in all it was gooooood.