Tieban Tofu

This dish’s a classic a nightmarkets in China – you’ll usually see the tofu slowly frying on a flat top, smothered in a type of Chinese BBQ spice mix, and then chopped into bite sized pieces to serve.

1. Firm tofu (老豆腐), 2 blocks, ~800g. Cut into larger ~2 cm pieces – four slices per block. This needs to be thicker because we can’t have bubbling oil muffing up and making our spice mix clump.
2. Oil. For brushing. Peanut oil or sunflower oil are nice.
3. Scallions. Sliced, for garnish.
4. Spice mix: 1 star anise (八角), ½ tsp whole Sichuan peppercorns (花椒), ½ tsp cumin seeds (孜然), ½ tbsp Perilla seeds (苏子) -or- up the cumin seed by 1 tsp, ¼ tsp white pepper powder (白胡椒粉), ¼ tsp ginger powder (姜粉), ¼ tsp garlic powder (大蒜粉), 2 tbsp chili powder (辣椒面), 1 tbsp salt, ½ tbsp MSG (味精), 1 tsp sugar. These’ll all get ground together. Perilla seeds are also used in Korean cuisine so you might be able to try your luck there. For the chili powder, you’ll want one that’s not overly fiery, so the bog standard cayenne pepper from the bottle should work great.

That spice mix above’s one of the classic spice mixes used in Chinese BBQ. Just add in a bit of anti-caking agents and you’ve basically got what the street vendors use.

Process: Street food style Tieban Tofu:

1. Grind together the spice powder. First grind together the star anise, Sichuan peppercorns, and cumin seeds. Then add everything except the salt/sugar/MSG and grind again. Finally, add the salt/sugar/MSG and give it a final grind. The reason the salt/sugar/MSG is added at the end is so that it doesn’t cake.
2. Brush the widest skillet you have with a thin layer of oil. Less oil for this one because any oil bubbling over the top’ll muff up the layer of spice – this’s kinda mimicking Chinese BBQ dishes here.
3. Add the tofu to the pan, brush on a top layer of oil, and smother with the spice mix. I know ‘smother’ isn’t really a proper amount but… just use your own judgement. Take a look at a picture of how much we added if you need.
4. Fry the tofu for 5 minutes, then rearrange if needed. The street food vendors use a flat top so they can cook these nice and even. For us on a stove, rearranging halfway through’s a nice idea.
5. Fry for 5 minutes more, and with a minute to go top with sliced scallions.
6. Optionally chop into 2 cm cubes. This’s the way they’ll often do it on the street, then toss it in a bit of a plastic cup, then eat with disposable chopsticks.