I admire you guys so much. Chinese cuisine is one of my favourite, if not THE MOST favourite. Your explanations, the way you talk a little about the history and possible origins, the way you state the limitations of home-cooking as opposed to the restaurant versions and try to overcome that...everything is so well-thought-out. Please keep it up!
Thank you for the recipe!😀 My grandma used to cook this and half of the meat was stuffed in potatoes. Sometimes she cut the tofu in cubes, sometimes in triangles, but she steamed them rather than fried them.
Honestly, I just made this for breakfast, odd as it may sound for breakfast but it was well worth the time and effort. I made the filling yesterday and let it sit overnight refrigerated, ate this with some homemade Kimchi and steamed rice. Absolutly wonderful taste. Made this recipe numerous tiimes, even used chicken instead of pork but the pork is best. I have several pieces for lunch tomorrow while working all weekend at the Hospital (critical care ICU). Thank you for sharing this amazing recpie, it looks daunting but if you make it once, its a piece of cake. Thank you for all you do, I ( WE) appreciate you.
It doesn’t sound odd for ppl like me that grew up eating pad thai and pho for breakfast but big applaud to you for going through all that just for your breakfast
Thank you for this video, , , my dad , a 客家人, . . , taught us tis dish, becoming not just a family favorite . . You use the same soaking liquid , truly umami. . but his variation from your was , he use fresh shrimps, lots of them, since where we reside, fresh shrimp are abundant , and still add dried shrimp for their intense flavor. . Thank you for the video.
Hey, I was wondering if you'd do a video on what staples you like to have on hand for your pantry. So many of my favorite foreign chefs have a million things I want to try, but it's always a special occasion, never a "what do I have in the cupboard" type of thing.
My dad is Hakka and one old fashioned Hakka restaurant in Chinatown used some salted fish with the fillings. That restaurant has closed and sadly we have not encountered another location with similar taste.
I’ll be making this one this weekend! Looks good! By the way, today is February 18, 2020 and it was great to hear you guys today being interviewed on NPR! Great job.
So happy I found your channel! I love cooking but sometimes it's hard to really understand Chinese cooking from Chinese websites. I'll definitely be trying this one!
Yeah, I feel you. Learning how to cook a new cuisine (the right way) is never easy, and then the language barrier can add another layer of difficulty. Hope this helps, this stuffed tofu was one of the first Chinese dishes I (Chris) learned how to cook, love this dish!
When I was studying this dish at Fu Pei-Mei's cooking institute in Taipei, We were taught to put potato starch/corn starch inside the hollowed-out Tofu squares to make the meat stick inside the Tofu. Otherwise the meat filling had a nasty tendency to fall out. Or was this just a Taiwanese cooking 'stick'???
My mom made an abridged version of this - she put the meat on top of tofu slabs, pan fries them, then puts the tofu and sauce onto a plate, steams it, and serves. No way was she gonna hollow out a dozen tofu cubes for a weeknight dinner lol.
Yep, super common! We were going for that Dongjiang-style that you get when you eat out in the PRD.. even if you hollow it out you obviously don't have to be quite so ambitious as we were here :)
It was so hard to find "authentic" recipes anywhere... Everytime i click on one that claims to be authentic, it is not. So... This is great! Thank you! I hope to see some fujian/hokkien recipes if you know any. :)
Unfortunately Fujian is a bit of a blank hole on our map! Still haven't traveled there outside of Xiamen. There's a couple mincai restaurants in Shenzhen, but they're just so-so quality... we gotta go eat around Fuzhou and Quanzhou a bit :) In terms of Hakka food, we're most familiar with the Dongjiang and Heyuan styles.
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Chinese Cooking Demystified it's your wife hokkanese?
Just made this and it was more time consuming than I thought, but delicious!! Quick question though, my tofu kept sticking to my pan and when I moved them a chunk of the bottom ripped off. I could scrape the stuck tofu pieces off with a chop stick with a small amount of effort but I don't know why this happened. Even used a newish non stick pan! Any pointers on how to stop this sticking problem?
I know this is an old video, but I'm really curious. I've seen you use dried shrimp a lot, but I'm allergic to shellfish, so I'm wondering if there's any alternatives? Would dried salted fish work?
All this time I taught there was a Chinese guy narrating for for gentleman, wow I don’t speak Chinese but I know his Chinese gotta be pretty damm good.
Sounds great to me--but what to do if you can't find stock concentrate? What would I be looking for in an Asian grocery store were I to go seek it out? Keep up the great work, you two!
So you don't really *need* it here, as we're already using the reserved soaking liquid for the sauce. You could skip it, or even toss in a sprinkle of bouillon powder. Generally though, Knorr sells a bit of concentrate that works (and can be found in Asian supermarkets), though we generally like to use a scallop sauce concentrate like this: www.amazon.com/Hengs-Abalone-Scallop-Sauce-628MART/dp/B07FQ95G9W ^ Don't buy that on Amazon though, that price is absolutely absurd. Literally 15 times more expensive than the same bottle if you bought it in China. I've seen similar stuff more reasonably priced at Chinese grocers in the USA.
Chinese Cooking Demystified im from Malaysia and the hakkas here love to stuff fish paste into all sorts of veggies too... hope you had a good time in Malaysia. anyway thanks for the recipe!
I've been looking online for authentic Chinese cooking implements. I just wonder if you're in a position to point me in the right direction. Where do Chinese people go for knifes and woks?
Hi. I love your channel. Straightforward and authentic (and I think that is putting it mildly). One question though - is there a reason why you wouldn't mix the scooped out portion of tofu with the filling made of pork? Thanks.
We like it with pure and more pork, lol, it's more tasty this way. But you can totally mix tofu back, this way you should cut back the pork you use, otherwise you'll have a lot of fillings left.
Great video man. Hope I'll get to make this sooner rather than later. For requests: I'd love to learn more about the different combinations of ingredients and flavour profiles in stir fries (姜葱／蒜蓉／豆豉 etc)
So I absolutely adore the idea of doing more stuff in terms of flavor profiles (I think it's the best way to learn how to cook), but I'm wondering how best to structure it in terms of a video. The last vid we did was on the Yuxiang flavor profile, do you think that sort of approach is what you're looking for?
Chinese Cooking Demystified I haven't really thought about the structure to be honest. I loved the yuxiang video but I still thought about it as a recipe rather than a profile that i can apply elsewhere. Perhaps do an episode where you lay out the typical ingredients that go into stir fries on a table, and explain what each of them add in terms of taste/texture/Aroma etc? I'm asking because I just did a bitter gourd and chicken stir fry using your mapo tofu flavour profile (I had a lot of doubanjiang left from making that recipe) and it turned out beautiful. I went ahead with that combination because I knew from eating experiences that bitter gourd works well with fermented bean products. On the other hand, celery + doubanjiang for example would be pretty bad I imagine. It would be great i could rock up to a groceries store and buy whatever was cheap and fresh that day knowing that I had the knowledge to create a stir fry that works with that ingredient. Kinda like knowing the general rules of building a salad you know?
Before watching my mind immediately went to mushrooms and chestnuts. Which, it turns out, went in with the pork xD I'd absolutely try those, with maybe some chopped smoked tempeh "bacon" or even spiced lentils or white beans? Gonna give it a try myself at some point, will let you know how it goes. So often I get drawn in to tofu recipes from the channel, only to learn they aren't vegetarian, so I have to improvise!
Dumplings, that's actually how this dish came to existing. Hakka originated in the northern parts of China and when they come to the south, they don't have wheat flour for dumplings. So they opted for whatever they have on hand, including tofu. :)
Haha sometimes I feel like Chinese cuisine is like one big troll job on vegans. Historically, so many awesome vegetarian ingredients came out of the monastery culture in China, but like they've like all been repurposed for nonveg purposes. Chinese vegetable dishes too are really delcious, but are often made with a little meat (or stock, or animal fat) to make everything taste good. Chinese food would be great for people doing the 'meat light' sort of thing. One of these days we'll do a basic sort of fried tofu though. A real tasty dish and there's some technique to it too.
Hi, I'm requesting a recipe for these "tofu" cookies I used to get in Chinatown in San Francisco.. They were Carmel coloured, chewy, not cakey. I think they could have had red Nom Yu in them. slightly salty and sweer With peanuts sprinkled on top. Any idea. So happy if you could help with this.
My god... here in Canada, your tofu wouldn't be "medium hard", it would be "soft"! Our "normal" tofu is so hard, way more than a brick of cheese, and everybody say to squeeze it as much as you possibly can before using it to make it "better"...
Personally i found tofu is a not firm enough. i prefer to press it overnight to remove the excess liquid to make it more firm in order to get a ' togan' -drier tofu.
I admire you guys so much. Chinese cuisine is one of my favourite, if not THE MOST favourite. Your explanations, the way you talk a little about the history and possible origins, the way you state the limitations of home-cooking as opposed to the restaurant versions and try to overcome that...everything is so well-thought-out. Please keep it up!
Thank you for the recipe!😀
My grandma used to cook this and half of the meat was stuffed in potatoes. Sometimes she cut the tofu in cubes, sometimes in triangles, but she steamed them rather than fried them.
Honestly, I just made this for breakfast, odd as it may sound for breakfast but it was well worth the time and effort. I made the filling yesterday and let it sit overnight refrigerated, ate this with some homemade Kimchi and steamed rice. Absolutly wonderful taste. Made this recipe numerous tiimes, even used chicken instead of pork but the pork is best. I have several pieces for lunch tomorrow while working all weekend at the Hospital (critical care ICU). Thank you for sharing this amazing recpie, it looks daunting but if you make it once, its a piece of cake. Thank you for all you do, I ( WE) appreciate you.
It doesn’t sound odd for ppl like me that grew up eating pad thai and pho for breakfast but big applaud to you for going through all that just for your breakfast
Thank you for this video, , , my dad , a 客家人, . . , taught us tis dish, becoming not just a family favorite . . You use the same soaking liquid , truly umami. . but his variation from your was , he use fresh shrimps, lots of them, since where we reside, fresh shrimp are abundant , and still add dried shrimp for their intense flavor. . Thank you for the video.
In Mauritius island ,it is the meizhou style . Probably super old, as they were brought by Hakka people more than one hundred years ago.
Hey, I was wondering if you'd do a video on what staples you like to have on hand for your pantry. So many of my favorite foreign chefs have a million things I want to try, but it's always a special occasion, never a "what do I have in the cupboard" type of thing.
We use a mini melon baller and have a nice round ball to place in the middle. Much easier than carving out a square.
Wow as you are westerner the way you making these dish truly perfectly... including your skill all perfect and the ingredients too
What I like is that you really incorporate the traditiibal way and explain to people why.
Thank you. I really enjoy the receipes
My dad is Hakka and one old fashioned Hakka restaurant in Chinatown used some salted fish with the fillings. That restaurant has closed and sadly we have not encountered another location with similar taste.
I’ll be making this one this weekend! Looks good! By the way, today is February 18, 2020 and it was great to hear you guys today being interviewed on NPR! Great job.
In Mauritius it is the Mei zhou style. Fun fact , the stuffing is often smoothed with a wet knife .
So happy I found your channel! I love cooking but sometimes it's hard to really understand Chinese cooking from Chinese websites. I'll definitely be trying this one!
Yeah, I feel you. Learning how to cook a new cuisine (the right way) is never easy, and then the language barrier can add another layer of difficulty. Hope this helps, this stuffed tofu was one of the first Chinese dishes I (Chris) learned how to cook, love this dish!
Dear God this looks incredible. Thanks for posting another awesome recipe!
Cheers! Any requests?
@@ChineseCookingDemystified Hi, baked desert of some kind, if it exists :). Best regards from Czech Rep.
It's always great. Your video is excellent quality. We liked and enjoyed to the end.
this is really good. My grandma did not cook as good as this. but her style was authentic
YOOOO THATS THE FOOD OF MY PEOPLE! cant wait to try this recipe :D
When I was studying this dish at Fu Pei-Mei's cooking institute in Taipei, We were taught to put potato starch/corn starch inside the hollowed-out Tofu squares to make the meat stick inside the Tofu. Otherwise the meat filling had a nasty tendency to fall out. Or was this just a Taiwanese cooking 'stick'???
My mom made an abridged version of this - she put the meat on top of tofu slabs, pan fries them, then puts the tofu and sauce onto a plate, steams it, and serves. No way was she gonna hollow out a dozen tofu cubes for a weeknight dinner lol.
Yep, super common! We were going for that Dongjiang-style that you get when you eat out in the PRD.. even if you hollow it out you obviously don't have to be quite so ambitious as we were here :)
Malaysian here, we use salted fish and minced ginger and scallion for the pork stuffing.
My grandmother's Hakka and she used to make these often
It was so hard to find "authentic" recipes anywhere... Everytime i click on one that claims to be authentic, it is not. So... This is great! Thank you! I hope to see some fujian/hokkien recipes if you know any. :)
Unfortunately Fujian is a bit of a blank hole on our map! Still haven't traveled there outside of Xiamen. There's a couple mincai restaurants in Shenzhen, but they're just so-so quality... we gotta go eat around Fuzhou and Quanzhou a bit :)
In terms of Hakka food, we're most familiar with the Dongjiang and Heyuan styles.
Chinese Cooking Demystified it's your wife hokkanese?
A clay loop tool works really well instead of a knife!
Another Hakka dish . Mei Cai Rou , please.
Dudeeee. Hakka represent! Love your videos
Just made this and it was more time consuming than I thought, but delicious!!
Quick question though, my tofu kept sticking to my pan and when I moved them a chunk of the bottom ripped off. I could scrape the stuck tofu pieces off with a chop stick with a small amount of effort but I don't know why this happened. Even used a newish non stick pan! Any pointers on how to stop this sticking problem?
I would fry hotter and leave it longer. Tofu will release on it's own time like most other proteins
This looks great! I'm really happy I found this channel. I'd love to see more tofu dishes!
Thank you :)
I know this is an old video, but I'm really curious. I've seen you use dried shrimp a lot, but I'm allergic to shellfish, so I'm wondering if there's any alternatives? Would dried salted fish work?
flat bottom woks you make the cooking world go round
It’s like you guys read my mind, direct access to the file “my favorite Chinese food” 😋
Why do we stir in only one direction? What is the difference in result between stirring one way and stirring back and forth?
Thanks man I’ll try it !
Thanks for sharing this with us. That is one great looking dish. Smell should be awesome.
All this time I taught there was a Chinese guy narrating for for gentleman, wow I don’t speak Chinese but I know his Chinese gotta be pretty damm good.
Sounds great to me--but what to do if you can't find stock concentrate? What would I be looking for in an Asian grocery store were I to go seek it out? Keep up the great work, you two!
So you don't really *need* it here, as we're already using the reserved soaking liquid for the sauce. You could skip it, or even toss in a sprinkle of bouillon powder.
Generally though, Knorr sells a bit of concentrate that works (and can be found in Asian supermarkets), though we generally like to use a scallop sauce concentrate like this:
www.amazon.com/Hengs-Abalone-Scallop-Sauce-628MART/dp/B07FQ95G9W
^ Don't buy that on Amazon though, that price is absolutely absurd. Literally 15 times more expensive than the same bottle if you bought it in China. I've seen similar stuff more reasonably priced at Chinese grocers in the USA.
Aiyah! Even though that's for 3 bottles, you're right, that is just absurd! Thanks for the tips!
I am impressed you know the malaysian style as well...
Haha just don't ask me for a recipe and the details on making them... all I know's based off what I've eaten in KL :)
Chinese Cooking Demystified im from Malaysia and the hakkas here love to stuff fish paste into all sorts of veggies too... hope you had a good time in Malaysia. anyway thanks for the recipe!
I've been looking online for authentic Chinese cooking implements. I just wonder if you're in a position to point me in the right direction. Where do Chinese people go for knifes and woks?
Hi. I love your channel. Straightforward and authentic (and I think that is putting it mildly). One question though - is there a reason why you wouldn't mix the scooped out portion of tofu with the filling made of pork? Thanks.
We like it with pure and more pork, lol, it's more tasty this way. But you can totally mix tofu back, this way you should cut back the pork you use, otherwise you'll have a lot of fillings left.
I made this the other day and it was so good and easy to make
Your channel is amazing! I can't wait to make this
Great video man. Hope I'll get to make this sooner rather than later.
For requests: I'd love to learn more about the different combinations of ingredients and flavour profiles in stir fries (姜葱／蒜蓉／豆豉 etc)
So I absolutely adore the idea of doing more stuff in terms of flavor profiles (I think it's the best way to learn how to cook), but I'm wondering how best to structure it in terms of a video. The last vid we did was on the Yuxiang flavor profile, do you think that sort of approach is what you're looking for?
Chinese Cooking Demystified I haven't really thought about the structure to be honest. I loved the yuxiang video but I still thought about it as a recipe rather than a profile that i can apply elsewhere. Perhaps do an episode where you lay out the typical ingredients that go into stir fries on a table, and explain what each of them add in terms of taste/texture/Aroma etc?
I'm asking because I just did a bitter gourd and chicken stir fry using your mapo tofu flavour profile (I had a lot of doubanjiang left from making that recipe) and it turned out beautiful. I went ahead with that combination because I knew from eating experiences that bitter gourd works well with fermented bean products. On the other hand, celery + doubanjiang for example would be pretty bad I imagine. It would be great i could rock up to a groceries store and buy whatever was cheap and fresh that day knowing that I had the knowledge to create a stir fry that works with that ingredient. Kinda like knowing the general rules of building a salad you know?
Thanks for the recipe can’t wait to give it a go!
Anyone got a good suggestion for a veggie stuffing? Or vegan?
Before watching my mind immediately went to mushrooms and chestnuts. Which, it turns out, went in with the pork xD
I'd absolutely try those, with maybe some chopped smoked tempeh "bacon" or even spiced lentils or white beans? Gonna give it a try myself at some point, will let you know how it goes.
So often I get drawn in to tofu recipes from the channel, only to learn they aren't vegetarian, so I have to improvise!
Mushrooms + Gluten (made with mushroom stock)
looks great! fun way to eat something like a dumpling without the carbs.
Dumplings, that's actually how this dish came to existing. Hakka originated in the northern parts of China and when they come to the south, they don't have wheat flour for dumplings. So they opted for whatever they have on hand, including tofu. :)
Awesome....i'll try it with some cottage cheese...indian vegetarian version....thanks for the idea
what do you think a vegan version of this dish could be?
I just realized the guy presenting in these videos sounds exactly like the host of the Philosophize This podcast...
Good brain food! Pork has B vitamins, tofu has letchithin
and both tofu and pork have
protein. Thank you so much!
My vegan friend, when I showed her this video: "Finally, a tofu dish that actually looks appetizing! Oh wait, did he say 'pork'? Goddammit."
Haha sometimes I feel like Chinese cuisine is like one big troll job on vegans. Historically, so many awesome vegetarian ingredients came out of the monastery culture in China, but like they've like all been repurposed for nonveg purposes.
Chinese vegetable dishes too are really delcious, but are often made with a little meat (or stock, or animal fat) to make everything taste good. Chinese food would be great for people doing the 'meat light' sort of thing.
One of these days we'll do a basic sort of fried tofu though. A real tasty dish and there's some technique to it too.
Check the serious eats vegan mapo tofu. Or their vegan chorizo. Meat eater here, and both those recipes are great.
Hi, I'm requesting a recipe for these "tofu" cookies I used to get in Chinatown in San Francisco.. They were Carmel coloured, chewy, not cakey. I think they could have had red Nom Yu in them. slightly salty and sweer With peanuts sprinkled on top. Any idea. So happy if you could help with this.
You got a picture by any chance? It might be a diaspora dish, or we could be having a brain fart, but can't seem to place a finger on that one :/
They were cookie size and were baked on a sheet pan. Not planning on going to SF anytime soon but will take a pic. If I do
I thought your all-time favorite tofu was the one with the chili paste on top from a local inconspicuous street restaurant.
Hi. :) This looks delicious! Just asking, is there a veggie substitution for the pork?
Can you recommend a non-seafood substitue for the shrimp?
Sure, use only the dried mushrooms. Up the quantity a touch, let's say ~65g?
Awesome, thanks. Will be trying this soon.
Spencer Smith if you eat meat, you can try pork.
Linda Elvenia : Could be a shellfish allergy. So maybe want to avoid.
bollyking my recommendation was to try just pork instead of shrimp/seafood.
excellent vid but use a paper towel to soak up moisture from prepped tofu b4 deep frying to cut down oil spatter.
i love malaxiangguo and looking the real recipe everywhere but couldn't find the best one please help :)
Love that too! The base is the key, which I'm still researching on how to make a good version of it. It's definetely on the list. :)
can't wait for it ! you earn new subscriber ;)
Any old hakka grandma here to confirm the chopstick coring skill?
Thank you very much
i love a Hakka Thunder Tea Rice, please
That one's interesting. Which version you're thinking? I had sweet, savory and even bitter versions, lol.
Steph - Chinese Cooking Demystified i think savory is the best for me
Hakka Thunder Tea Rice is one of my all time faves
My god... here in Canada, your tofu wouldn't be "medium hard", it would be "soft"!
Our "normal" tofu is so hard, way more than a brick of cheese, and everybody say to squeeze it as much as you possibly can before using it to make it "better"...
That looks damn good
My God! Chef, who are you? Marry me.
Personally i found tofu is a not firm enough. i prefer to press it overnight to remove the excess liquid to make it more firm in order to get a ' togan' -drier tofu.
Do you have a Chinese supermarket near you? You can simply buy dougan or extra firm tofu if you like it firmer :)
A shame many westerners don’t give tofu a chance
A challenge, would you be able to hack a vegan version of this Hakka stuffed tofu?
"stir only in one direction.." C'mon
Asian moms use their hands 😂
1:18 Dangerous
woooooo weeeeeeeeeeeee
You sound like ethan klein but better.
Blanching "..like we always do with tofu..." I just watched your stir fry tofu video and you didn't do that.
If you pan-fry tofu until crisp like we did in that video it doesn't need to be blanched :)
Ahh. That makes sense. Thanks for the response!
Cheers yeah I (Chris) actually had the same question when Steph was filming lol
I envy your kids
Tofu stuffed with pork! Bet that freaks the vegans out. Lol
? What does this have to do with vegans?