CHEAT’S MAPO TOFU PACKET
We’ll always be the first ones to preach the value of handmade versus store-bought! However, there are occasions when you need a shortcut because time is running out. Cheating is a necessary evil from time to time.
Instead of cooking the chicken from scratch, you buy a rotisserie chicken. Why make your own tomato sauce when there are wonderful jars of marinara to choose from? And certainly, sometimes, just as we grab for our familiar jars of store-bought bean pastes, chili sauces, and jarred pickled veggies, we’ve found that utilizing store-bought mapo tofu sauce is not actually as sacrilegious as you may imagine.
A pre-made mapo tofu spice packet is the quickest and most convenient method to get the restaurant-quality look and flavor of mapo tofu at home if you don’t have the time or energy to make it yourself! The sauce in issue is in Spicy Element’s Shengchubao Mapo Tofu package, which is packed with all the flavor, heat, and chili goodness you’d expect from your favorite restaurant. Add a bit ground pork, some ginger, and garlic, and BAM! MAPO. And a really, really, really fantastic one at that.
In fact, after tasting it, we’ve begun to wonder if our favorite Chinese restaurants are keeping a tub of pre-made mapo tofu sauce next to the pan! Just that good.
INGREDIENTS:
- 200g of mapo tofu sauce packet
- 24 ounces of silken tofu
- 6 ounces of ground pork
- 5 cloves of garlic
- 2 teaspoons of cornstarch (dissolved in 1 tbsp of water)
- 1 tablespoon of minced ginger
- 1 cup of water
- 1 chopped scallion
- 1/2 teaspoon of Sichuan Peppercorn Powder
INSTRUCTIONS:
- Brown the pork with a wooden spatula in a wok over medium-high heat. Stir-fry the ginger and garlic with the pork until the pork is slightly crisped. Add the spice packet’s contents and mix until everything is well-combined. Half of a box of tofu can be used today, and the rest can be saved for another time.
- Boil the water, then increase the heat to high.
- Meanwhile, cut your tofu into large 112-inch cubes and add to the wok with the garlic and scallion mixture. To assemble, simply give everything a little stir. To keep the tofu from crumbling, try folding it instead of squeezing it.
- Cook until the sauce coats the spatula and thickens, and becomes glossy after adding the cornstarch slurry.
- Immediately serve with scallions and the Sichuan peppercorn powder on top and plenty of white rice, and savor the time you saved thanks to your shortcut!