China
Photo: ZhengZhou, CC BY-SA 4.0, croppedMapo tofu
麻婆豆腐
/ma˧˥ pʰwo˧˥ toʊ˥˩ fu/mah-pwor doe-foo
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- Taste
- SpicySavory
- Made with
- Beans & tofuBeef
History
Mapo tofu is Sichuan cooking in one bowl: soft tofu in a red, oily sauce of fermented broad-bean chilli paste with minced beef and plenty of Sichuan pepper, which leaves the mouth tingling. The name means "pockmarked old woman's tofu". The usual story says it was created in the 1860s or 1870s by the wife of a small restaurant owner in Chengdu named Chen, whose face was marked by smallpox; she cooked it for labourers who carried oil into the city. Her shop became famous, and the dish spread across China and then to Japan and beyond, where it is often made milder.
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