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.

It will be out on Friday December 3, 2021, so bookmark the recipe here, and be sure to subscribe and hit the bell on YouTube to get notified when it’s out!

Woo Can Cook is a series where we reproduce fun foods and recipes from my childhood. Some of them are authentically Chinese and/or pan-Asian, but a lot of them are odd Americanized versions that I inherited from my parents and grandparents while growing up in the Bay Area/California.

We're live streaming every Tues/Thurs at 6:30PM PST, with new recipes out every Friday!