Gluten Free Vegan Mapo Tofu
This is a gluten free recipe for mapo tofu that vegetarians will love!
It is totally vegan and uses easy to find substitutes for some of the gluten-containing ingredients normally used in this dish.
Vegan mapo tofu is a surprisingly easy meal that you can whip up on a weeknight. Or, cook it in bulk in advance and store in the freezer for those nights when the urge to get a chinese takeaway hits.
Gluten Free Chinese Takeaway
Anyone who has celiac or non-celiac gluten sensitivity will know how hard it can be to find gluten free Chinese food recipes, and when it comes to takeaways it can often be just nigh-on impossible. Especially when it comes to vegetarian or vegan options on top of that!
But that’s not because it’s impossible (or even that difficult) to create gluten free Chinese recipes at home. The problem is the ubiquity of ingredients like soy sauce, Shaoxing wine or oyster sauce. Or in the case of mapo tofu… doubanjiang, a spicy bean paste that usually contains wheat flour. But more on that later!
If you know where to look, though, there are usually easy to find alternatives to these ingredients that you can keep at home and recreate the dishes yourself.
In the case of this gluten free mapo tofu, we’ll see just how easy it really is to get very close to the real thing.
But, do bear in mind that these are substitutions. And means you won’t get the absolutely authentic taste from this recipe unless you find some ingredients that I haven’t yet managed to track down. Such as gluten free doubanjiang!
But I don’t believe this deviates significantly. And of course, this will still be delicious in its own right!
How to make gluten free mapo tofu
Roughly blitz and cook mushrooms
This recipe borrows from Kenji Lopez-Alt’s go-to method of replacing ground minced meat with mushrooms roughly chopped in a food processor – something he uses in his mapo tofu vegan recipe. When done right this method approximates some of the texture of the ground pork this dish traditionally uses. It also gives this gluten free mapo tofu some additional umami flavour.
The mushrooms will give off a lot of water when cooked. In fact, you may find yourself feeling as though you’re boiling mushrooms as it cooks (top left in the collage below).
Make sure you cook them until there’s no water left before adding the oil. This is what allows the mushrooms to brown, giving us the umami flavour we’re looking for.
Infuse cooking oil with sichuan peppercorns
No vegan free mapo tofu would be complete without the numbing flavour of Sichuan peppercorns.
Known as ‘mala’ in Chinese, the ‘hot’ and ‘numbing’ qualities of the peppercorns are a mainstay of this dish.
So in this vegan mapo tofu, we roughly grind the peppercorns with a mortar and pestle. Then fry them in 1 tbsp of oil. The oil is then drained and reserved and the peppercorns are discarded.
Create aromatic mushroom base
Using either the Sichuan peppercorn-infused oil or 1 tbsp of neutral oil, minced garlic, ginger and the white part of a scallion is fried over a medium heat and allowed to flavour the oil.
The spices and sauces (including vegetable stock) are added here and also cook for a minute before the mushroom base is then added again to create an aromatic, red-stained base for our main dish.
Finishing off the vegan free mapo tofu
Two final steps are then needed to finish off this vegan mapo tofu.
Firstly, the tofu must be folded into the dish. I like using previously frozen medium tofu in this recipe – and I will explain why later.
Secondly, the final sauce is thickened with a slurry – cornflour mixed with water.
Potato starch would also be a great substitute here, and possibly even better than the cornflour, which takes slightly longer to thicken a sauce. But I’ve gone with cornflour here because it’s a much more common ingredient to find in UK supermarkets!
Ingredients
As always, I like to go through each of the ingredients in detail so you know exactly what’s required to make this dish absolutely perfect.
If you just want to cook the food, keep scrolling!
Mushrooms
The goal here is to draw out all of the water and let it reduce and cook off so that you’re left with no water left. The mushrooms cannot start to brown until the water is gone, so we need to get to this point before we can gain the extra flavour that browning gives us.
I’ve found that adding a pinch of salt at the start speeds up the process by drawing the water out. I also wait until the point where most of the water has evaporated to drop in 1 tbsp oil. This means that after essentially boiling off the water, we then start to saute the mushrooms. That helps us get that umami flavour.
Oil
In this recipe, I infuse the oil with Sichuan peppercorns at the start for a much more pronounced ‘mala’ flavour.
BUT, this recipe also calls for a condiment made by iconic Chinese brand Laoganma.
The ‘Chinese Mushrooms in Chili Oil; condiment contains a chilli oil infused with Sichuan peppercorns, which also contains the hot and numbing hit.
This is effectively a ready-made chilli sauce that contains broad bean paste and is partly what we are using here to make up for the lack of gluten free doubanjiang. But it also contains Sichuan peppercorns.
So if you are sensitive to the hot and numbing flavour of these peppercorns – or if you’re just looking to cut down on the steps needed to make this dish – then omit this step completely!
Stock
Vegetarian Chinese stocks aren’t easy to come by unless you make your own, and in this recipe I’ve used a stock cube optionally infused with dried mushroom powder and sea kelp.
If you don’t have the mushroom powder or sea kelp lying around then feel free to skip this step. But I always like to have these ingredients to hand in the cupboard because they create extra flavourful sauces – particularly when cooking gluten free vegan Chinese food!
Garlic, Ginger, Spring Onions
In Cajun cooking, green bell pepper, onions and celery are known as the ‘holy trinity’ because they are used so frequently in the region’s dishes.
I often think about that when I’m cooking garlic, ginger and spring onions in an Asian context. These three aromatics are widely used together and infuse so much flavour into the oil. What’s more is they do it right at the start of the cooking process!
Make sure to use the white part of the spring onion. Keep the green part to garnish the dish when you serve it up later!
Spices
This is where it gets tricky. Making gluten free mapo tofu means hunting down gluten free doubanjiang – which is notoriously difficult to find.
Doubanjiang is a fermented condiment made from broad beans. It is similar to black bean paste or miso (made from soybeans) but lending a slightly different flavour profile. And it also contains heat from Sichuan chillies.
This almost always contains wheat flour, which is used to start the fermentation process. I have yet to find a gluten-free substitute.
So my recipe uses the Korean chilli paste, gochujang, instead.
A Combination of Gochujang and Chilli Oil
Using this, you get the heat from the gochujang as well as a fermented tanginess as this paste is made from fermented rice starch.
Although it is similar, it is not the same. So it won’t, by itself, get us as close as possible to doubanjiang – which is essential to this dish.
So I like to mix this with Laoganma’s Chinese Mushrooms in Chilli Oil. As mentioned earlier, this is a condiment that includes broad bean paste – which is effectively what doubanjiang is. It is also infused with Sichuan peppercorns which means you skip that step if you like!
These two together really help to elevate this dish, bringing it close to that original mapo tofu flavour!
Tofu
As mentioned earlier, this recipe calls for previously frozen medium tofu.
Traditionally, silken tofu is used for this dish. But I love making use of the freezer when it comes to my gluten free mapo tofu.
The water content inside the bean curd expands as it freezes, bursting some of the cell walls inside the block. And so when it thaws, this water leaks out creating a spongy texture.
Freezing tofu is a technique often used in vegan cooking to lend a new texture to the ingredient, making it more reminiscent of chicken.
But this isn’t why I do it. I do it because that spongy texture means it’s perfect for soaking up flavour in vegan mapo tofu. It really does create a taste explosion in your mouth!
I find it’s best to let frozen tofu thaw overnight the night before you want to make this recipe.But if you’ve forgotten, you can speed up the process by boiling in a pot of salted water for around ten minutes.
If you do that, make sure to cool and then gently squeeze out the excess water before using. The more water you squeeze out, the drier the tofu becomes. And so the more of the sauce it will soak up when you simmer it in the pot later.
Pair this dish with my fish fragrant aubergine and some jasmine rice!
Gluten-Free Vegan Mapo Tofu
This Mapo Tofu recipe uses minced mushrooms and a spice mix based around gochujang and chili oil.
Ingredients
- 1 tbsp vegetable oil
- 1 tsp Sichuan peppercorns, ground roughly using a mortar and pestle (use less if desired or leave out this step)
- 200g mushrooms, blitzed in food processor
- 1 tsp sea salt
- 1 tbsp oil
- ⅔ medium cloves, garlic
- 2-3cm knob, ginger
- White part of one scallion, thinly sliced
- 1 tsp Gochujang (make sure it’s gluten free!)
- 1 tsp Chinese Mushrooms in Chili Oil, roughly chopped
- 1 tbsp Chinese Yellow Wine, such as Wangzhihe cooking wine
- 1 tbsp Gluten-free soy sauce
- 1 tsp sugar
- 200 mls stock
- 5cm X 5cm piece of sea kelp (optional)
- 1 tsp dried mushroom powder (optional)
- 1 block (250g) frozen then thawed medium tofu, cut into cubes
- 1 tbsp cornflour
- 1 tbsp water
- ½ tsp toasted sesame oil (optional)
- 1 Green part of the scallion from earlier, chopped, to serve
Instructions
- Make stock, mix in the mushroom powder and drop in the sea kelp if using. Leave to infuse, and set aside for later.
- Add mushrooms to a food processor and blitz until they resemble minced garlic or onions.
- In a wok, dry fry the mushrooms over a high heat along with the salt until they release all their water (and they will get watery!), about 8-10 minutes of cooking time.
- Once the mushrooms start to brown, add 1 tbsp oil and stir fry until lightly browned - then take mushrooms out and reserve.
- Add the other 1 tbsp oil into the wok and heat, and add 1 tsp ground Sichuan peppercorns and fry until fragrant. (If omitting this step, add the oil to the wok and move straight to adding the garlic and ginger, below)
- Remove from the heat and drain, reserving the oil and discarding the used peppercorns.
- Return the oil to the pan and add garlic, ginger and the white part of the green onion and stir-fry until soft, about 1 minute.
- Add the gochujang and chinese mushroom in chilli oil and stir to combine.Then fry for about 30 seconds, making sure the oil is stained red.
- Add the mushrooms and stir to combine.
- Add the Chinese Yellow Wine around the sides of the wok and simmer until reduced, and then add the soy sauce and sugar.
- Discard the kombu from the stock (if using) and add the stock mixture to the wok and let simmer until reduced to a thin sauce about 5-8 minutes.
- Add tofu and carefully stir to combine, being careful not to break the tofu chunks.
- Mix the cornflour with 1 tbsp water to create a slurry, and add ⅓ of the mix to the wok. Stir to combine. The sauce should thicken within 10 to 15 seconds of adding the slurry and if it hasn’t thickened to your ideal consistency, then add more of the cornflour mix - but do this bit by bit so as not to over thicken. It’s easier to add more slurry than to fix and over-thickened sauce.
- Take off the heat, add sesame oil if using, and garnish with the green part of the scallion from earlier
Nutrition Information:
Yield:
2Serving Size:
1Amount Per Serving: Calories: 403Total Fat: 26gSaturated Fat: 3gTrans Fat: 0gUnsaturated Fat: 22gCholesterol: 3mgSodium: 1916mgCarbohydrates: 21gFiber: 4gSugar: 8gProtein: 11g
Not all gochujang is gluten free so please be careful and read the labels! And so I empathise if you can’t find a suitable gochujang paste near you.
If you can’t find this ingredient, I would recommend doubling up on the Laoganma Chilli oil. This will ensure you have enough heat from the chillies, but it won’t get you all of the fermented tanginess you need.
Adding a teaspoon of miso paste or Chinese fermented black beans to the chilli oil will help here. Again, make sure you read the label to guarantee they are gluten free!
The texture of Beyond Meat works really well here, but I find the taste to be overpowering, ruining the more subtle flavours of the dish.
So you certainly can use it if you like – or if you want to experiment. You might even find you love it. But personally I stick to the mushrooms!
The short answer is no, and I haven’t yet found a gluten free chinese bean paste product.
This recipe uses a combination of gluten-free gochujang and a brand of chilli oil which contains broad bean paste, which substitutes quite well for the tangy and spicy flavour of doubanjiang.
This should keep for up to three days in the fridge, but I love freezing this dish and keeping it for up to three months.
For me, there’s nothing better than coming home after a long day and knowing that there’s ready-made, restaurant level Chinese food sitting in my freezer and all I have to do is reheat it!
This mapo tofu will go brilliantly with a simple side of steamed rice and a green vegetable such as pak choi or even broccoli.
But if you’re feeling extra adventurous, serve it with an egg fried rice and another delicious gluten free Chinese dish and set up a feast like the one above!