Sweet and Sour Fried Tofu
January 29th, 2010 | Chinese, Chinese Recipes | 28 Comments
To celebrate the upcoming Chinese New Year, I will be sharing a series of Chinese recipes with you on Rasa Malaysia, and it started with my ginger and scallion fish recipe a few days ago. Today, I have Christine of Christine’s Recipes here with her “Rainbow Fried Tofu” dish—or sweet and sour fried tofu. Christine’s Recipes offer a great selection of homey Chinese recipes which she makes for her family. If you read Chinese, you should also check out her Chinese blog. Please give her your warmest welcome!
Rasa Malaysia is one of my favorite food blogs that I’ve subscribed for a long time. I really admire Bee’s cooking, blogging and photography skills. When she asked me if I was interested in writing up a guest post, immediately I sent her a “YES” as it’s my honor indeed. Thanks to Bee for letting me have a chance to share my favorite recipe—sweet and sour fried tofu—on her blog. Here you go.
We’ve got lots of different Chinese dishes with sweet and sour sauce. Just name a few, sweet and sour chicken, sweet and sour pork, sweet and sour beef, that are traditional and well accepted in different countries. I posted these old-fashioned recipes on my humble blog too. Whenever I go into a Chinese restaurant, I spot many Aussie people would pick a dish in sweet and sour sauce. I can’t image how my Aussie friends are crazy about the taste of sweet and sour. Recently I created a dish on my own using this make-Aussie-crazy sauce with my favorite deep-fried tofu, feeling really good with both of the intriguing combination of ingredients and colorful outlook. So I also name it as “Rainbow Fried Tofu”. This dish goes extremely well with Jasmine rice, or served as an appetizer…(get sweet and sour fried tofu recipe after the jump)
Ingredients:
1 piece tofu, about 350 g
120 g chicken breast (or chicken thigh fillet)
1/2 onion, cut into cubes
1/4 green capsicum, cut into smaller pieces
1/4 red capsicum, cut into smaller pieces
1/4 yellow capsicum, cut into smaller pieces
1 tsp garlic, crushed
1 tsp minced shallot
Vegetable oil, for deep-frying
Seasoning:
1 tsp light soy sauce
1/2 tsp cornflour (corn starch)
1 tsp Shaoxing wine (or dry sherry)
1/2 tsp sugar
A pinch of pepper
Sweet and Sour Sauce:
3 Tbsp white vinegar
2 Tbsp white sugar
1 1/2 Tbsp tomato sauce (ketchup)
1/2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
1/2 cup water
1/4 tsp salt
Thickening:
2 tsp cornflour
2 Tbsp water
Method:
1.Rinse chicken and drain well. Roughly cut into chunks in bite size. Mix with marinade for 15 minutes.
2.Cut tofu into 3cm (1 1/4inch) cubes. Drain and absorb excess water with paper towels thoroughly. Generously season with salt. Fill a wok or deep saucepan one-third full of oil that should cover tofu. Heat oil to 180C (350F), or until a cube of bread dropped into the oil browns in 15 seconds. Carefully place tofu in batches and deep-fry for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally, or until golden. Remove with a slotted spoon and drain on paper towels. Set aside.
3.Clean out the wok, reserving 2 tablespoons of the oil. Or you might like to use a frypan. Add the onion and stir-fry over medium heat until translucent and fragrant. Push onion to sides of wok (or frypan). Add marinated chicken in the middle and stir-fry until cooked through. Set aside.
4.Add more oil in wok (or frypan), saute garlic and shallot until aromatic. Add the green, red and yellow capsicum. Stir-fry until softened. Toss in the onion and chicken. Quickly combine well. Pour in the sweet and sour sauce. Bring it to a boil. You might like to adjust the taste by adding more sugar or water bit by bit to your liking. Season with salt. Add thickening and cook to your preferred consistency. Remove from heat.
5.Place fried tofu on a platter, served with sweet and sour sauce.
Cook’s Notes:
1.Keep the cooked sweet and sour sauce in a separate bowl. Spoon the sauce over fried tofu in the last minute in order to make sure you can enjoy the crispy texture outside.
2.Take extreme care when placing down the tofu in hot oil. Mare sure the surface of tofu is wiped really dry. At the first time, I was too scared of getting burnt by hot oil. So I wore glove to lower down the tofu into the hot oil. (Too sheepish? Haha..) Then I thought a slotted spoon might be better than a glove. Carefully place tofu on a slotted spoon, then lower into hot oil, no hazards nor any mess at all. (Yay! Behave more like a professional cook, hehe… still a long way to go though.)
3.If you use firm tofu, it’s much easier to keep them intact while turning and deep-frying. Yet I used the silken, soft ones as I just grabbed whatever in my fridge to use. Both firm and silken tofu don’t have much difference in taste, but a slight difference in texture. Silken tofu needs more care when turning and cooking of course.
4. Yellow capsicums are not easily found. Simply omit it if you can’t find some. The taste won’t be changed at all. Or replace it with a few sliced pineapples, canned or fresh.
5. The sweet and sour taste can be adjusted by adding or reducing vinegar and sugar to your preference.
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I love all kinds of tofu. No matter how it is prepared… I just love it.
Excellent, I’m looking forward to the new series. I hope it will have more tofu, as I’ve recently really gotten into it!
Hi Bee,
Thanks so much for letting me have the opportunity to share my recipe with your readers.
I hope they like it.
Wish everyone a happy Chinese New Year, enjoying all the yummy recipes on Rasa Malaysia with your families.
Christine, thanks for guest posting and I love your teaser post on your site and the glowing remarks about Rasa Malaysia. :)
Great! it will give me more ideas for my CNY dinner that I will be cooking. And Christine is brilliant. I love her blog too.
Hi penny,
Thanks so much for your love of my blog. :)
I am a vegetarian so this recipe will work for me. I just need to take out the chicken in the recipe. Thank you for posting. I love sweet and sour sauce, too, it’s very popular in Chinese restaurants in India.
Hi Suresh,
Glad that you added this remark for vegetarians! Thanks a lot!
As I suscribe to both blogs, I feel lucky. Christine another wonderful recipe to try, I cannot wait to check it out!
To OysterCulture,
So sweet you are! Thanks for your support and your love of my recipes.
If one was hypothetically *ahem* terrified of deep-frying (sometimes I’m even worried by dropping pasta into boiling water…), could one just stir-fry the tofu instead? I’ve never been big on sweet and sour dishes because the restaurant versions I’ve had are too strong on the sweet, not enough on the sour, but this looks much more balanced…. and therefore mighty enticing :)
Hi Hannah,
Thanks for your sweet comment.
I’m afraid that the tofu without deep-frying won’t taste as good as you expect if you just stir-fry them with sweet and sour sauce.
I suppose I’ll just have to be brave one of these days :)
Cool recipe! Maybe this would entice my hubby to eat tofu, since he loves sweet and sour sauce but really doesn´t like tofu! May I ask if there´s a difference in taste between silken tofu and the firm ones when you fry them? I usually buy those from Singapore. Are there any brands you´d recommend?
Hi Priscilla ,
My hometown was Hong Kong, now I’m living in Australia. So I think I’m not the right person to suggest any brands of tofu in US or any other places. The tofu I choose to buy is produced locally (I guess it won’t take too long to transport to my nearby stores), so it has to be very fresh, with rich soy flavour. To cook this dish, it doesn’t matter whether you use silken tofu or the firm ones as I have tried both. It’s no difference in taste at all. The texture of fried silken tofu inside would be more delicate, yet it’s a bit hard to handle while deep-frying as silken tofu would be easily broken into pieces. Normally, I suggest you might use the firm or semi-firm ones at the first attempt.
Hi Christine!
I´m originally from Singapore but am residing in Germany now. THANKS for your reply! Its the first time that I received such a detailed reply to one of my food questions! Your website is awesome! Did you learn how to cook in Australia? Or were you already cooking in Hong Kong??? Most girls from Singapore don´t cook until they move overseas…. like myself, haha.
Hi Priscilla,
Thanks for your nice comment of my blog.
I had to help my mom to cook when I was a little girl in Hong Kong because my mom had a full-time work. Then I had been cooking for years until a few years before moving to Australia. I hired a domestic helper, so I didn’t need to cook at all for those several years. After moving to Australia, I need to cook again and enjoy cooking even more. When you said, most girls in Singapore don’t cook until they move overseas, I also found it’s the same to HK. For me, I don’t really cook western dishes until I move to Australia.
Perfect! Such a simple but tasty dish. Thank you, Christine!
Thanks so much !
Wow Christine, those toufu bites look lovely and crispy, great job. I look forward to Bee’s Chin. NY series.
Eleanor,
Thanks for your kind words.
I also look forward to Bee’s CNY series.
This looks like an easy recipe to introduce to my friends this weekend.
Hope you and your friends like and enjoy this dish.
Hi Christine by way of RasaMalaysia
There is heaven in every bite of tofu and I really appreciate the sweet and sour sauce to accompany these little morsels. I couldn’t agree more about sharing the same interest that RasaMalaysia is one of probably everyones favorite websites to view. Bee is such a lovely person, well thanks for sharing,I will definitely be making real soon.
Hi David,
I share the same feeling with you. Bee is such a lovely person to work with.
Drop a line to let me know how you like the dish if you have cooked it. :)
What a great idea to pair tofu with sweet and sour sauce! Looks so appetizing! ;)
Thanks. It won’t disappoint any one who loves fried tofu and sweet/sour sauce.
For this recipe, I am very curious how you make the sweet and sour sauce. Well, the focused on the tofu but the sauce wasn’t elaborated. Can you explain the procedure? Thank you and much appreciated.