Szechuan Tofu and Veggies

Jacob was helping me to come up with meals for the week and he came across this stir fry recipe. We love Asian inspired food, so we figured we would give it a go! I made a special trip to my local Asian food market to grab some Chinese five spice and szechuan peppers.

The interesting part about this meal is the sauce. The sauce uses szechuan peppers, which are notorious for leaving the mouth with a numbing sensation. The numbing sensation can be attributed to a chemical in the peppers. The pepper is slightly spicy and slightly acidic. The sauce uses these peppers, soy sauce, maple syrup, sesame oil, rice wine vinegar, mirin, garlic, ginger, chili paste, five spice, and cornstarch. I started by preparing the sauce to make it easier when it came time to cook the stir fry.

After the sauce was prepared, I prepared all of the veggies to make the cooking process much easier. I sliced the onion and bell pepper. I shredded the broccoli and carrots. I cubed the tofu, cut the green beans in half, and sliced the green onions. I started by browning the tofu in a skillet with oil. I seasoned the tofu with salt and pepper. I removed the tofu from the pan when it was golden on most of the sides. Then, I added onion to the skillet with a little bit more oil. After the onion started to cook, I added in all of my veggies. I let the veggies continue to cook until they were tender. I tossed in the sauce and tofu--only letting it warm through, which was about two minutes. I served the stir fry over rice, topped it with scallions, and sprinkled some sesame seeds on top.

This was a good meal, but I did feel like it was missing something. I loved the flavor of the sauce, but it needed a bit more. I loved the texture of the onions, green beans, and broccoli. The numbing sensation of the peppers was very interesting! I liked this, but I have had better stir fries, so I think this one needs a little work.

Taste: 8/10

Notes for next time: This stir fry was really good, but I left like it was missing something. The sauce was great!

Original link here!