hello hi everyone! Wesley here. Today we’re kicking off a brand new series inspired by the MANY requests that I’ve gotten for vegetarian and/or veggie friendly recipes, particularly those involving the use of tofu. If you’re like me, I have always been really frustrated with how tofu is used in most American vegetarian recipes, mostly because they involve using tofu as a meat substitute. There ARE many many uses of tofu throughout Asian and Chinese cuisine in particular that are built around tofu as the central ingredient (rather than a substitute), which means that the approach involved is much more conducive to creating a tender, toothsome, and tasty piece of tofu. 

More specifically today we’ll be taking a shot at a Chinese stir fry classic “wu siu tofu” or a braised firm tofu that has been shallow fried with veggies, and tossed in a dark soy sauce and oyster sauce braise. It’s one of my absolute favorite tofu dishes because the fry and braise method gives us a toothsome but also deeply flavorful piece of tofu. To add to this, it’s also a little bit more approachable than the similar “hong shao tofu” that recipe we did a little while back, since this involved a light breading and deep fry, which is a little bit more labor intensive. Hope you try it.

The recipe will be out on December 3rd, 2021, so bookmark the recipe here, bookmark the stream here, and pick up the ingredients below if you want to follow along and cook dinner with me.

INGREDIENTS

• 4 cloves garlic

• 1 inch (about 1 tbsp) ginger

• 14 oz (1 block) firm tofu

• 6-8 shiitake mushrooms

• 2 medium carrots

• 3-4 green onions

• 2 tbsp corn starch

• water

• peanut oil

INGREDIENTS (sauce)

• 4 tbsp low sodium soy sauce (or 2 tbsp full sodium soy sauce)

• 1 tbsp dark soy sauce

• 1 tbsp black vinegar

• 1 tbsp oyster sauce

• 2 tbsp shaoxing wine

• 2 tbsp chile crisp oil (lao gan ma)

• 1 tbsp brown sugar