This is a very easy mapo tofu inspired dish. Altering some ingredients and basically removing all cooking techniques this dish can be prepared within 15 minutes.

Main inspiration was my old mapo tofu recipe, though I did feel very lazy and did not want to waste a lot of time in the kitchen. The result did very much surprise me. It was not the best this dish could be, taking some time to prepare the meat properly for example (see map tofu recipe) would add to the overall quality for sure. But to be honest, this version will still be the main recipe Ill go to when cooking this dish next time because of the incredible short preparation time.

Ingredients

Soup:

• 2 pcs bonless chicken thy (or any other parts)
• 1 stick of leek
• 2 read paprikas
• 4 garlic cloves
• 1,5l water
• 1 tbsp vegetable broth

Sauce:

• 1 tbsp soj sauce

• 2 tbsp oyster sauce

• 2 tbsp mirin (or sugar)

• 1 tbsp chinese chili oil

• 1 tbsp ginger paste

• 1 thai chili

• 3 tbsp corn starch

• 5 pcs of fresh ground szechuan pepper

• 350g tofu

Instructions

Start by heating the water in a big pot. Cut the leek and paprikas as well as the garlic cloves. Cut the chicken and tofu into bit sized cubes.

Note: My chicken was still frozen when I started cooking. I added the pieces into the water to thaw, removed it 5 minutes later cut it and added it again. Certainly not how I would normally process it, but it makes the process so much faster. And honestly in this dish it does not make much difference.

Add all ingredients for the soup into the water and let it cook for a few minutes. In the meanwhile prepare the sauce. If you don’t have all ingredients, don’t worry. Just substitute with something similar. Just note that the chinese chili oil is key in my opinion for this dish.

Once the chicken has cooked through and the leek got soft add the sauce and let it heat up to a boil again. Afterward add the tofu.