Kkanpoong Tofu

January 7, 2023

   

A couple of our friends organised a vegan Korean potluck to ring in the new year, and Cindy and I enjoyed delving into a couple of new recipes for it. The dinner crew also included coeliac and low-FODMAP people, so we did our best to make gluten-free, garlic-free, etc dishes. Strange then that I chose something called spicy and crunchy garlic tofu. Even without garlic this had a lot of flavours going on, so I was confident it would still be fine - we upped the spring onion quantities to cover the garlic and regular onion absence and basically worked from there. Cindy tracked down gochagaru (Korean chilli powder) at KFL in Coburg and we were good to go.

The time consuming part of this dish is frying the little battered tofu cubes - the potato starched cubes do stick together in the frypan, so you either have to be very painstaking and patient in how you fry them or just deal with a few big clumps and lose some of the crispiness you'd get from a more careful approach. I'll definitely cut bigger cubes next time. As it was it took me 4 batches in our cast iron frying pan to get these guys crisped up and I was very imprecise by the end. 

Once the cubes are done everything else is easy. We kept the sauce separate until dinner time to try to maintain as much crispiness in the tofu as possible, but I suspect this would be best served immediately. Still, it was pretty great - spicy without being brutal and with a hint of sweetness from the gochagaru. An excellent accompaniment to an incredible feast. 

Spicy and crunchy garlic tofu (Kkanpoong tofu)

(adapted from this recipe on The Korean Vegan)

500g tofu, cubed (make your cubes a bit bigger than those pictured above I reckon)

1 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons + 1 teaspoon potato starch

2 green chillies, sliced finely

5 green onions, green parts chopped finely (this was out of an abundance of caution in terms of dietary restrictions - follow the original recipe if everyone you're feeding is okay with garlic etc)

1.5 tablespoons soy sauce

1 tablespoon gochagaru

1 tablespoon white wine vinegar

2 tablespoons maple syrup

1/2 tablespoon mirin

5 tablespoons of vegetable oil

1 tablespoon sesame oil

1 tablespoon sesame seeds

Combine the salt, the 2 tablespoons of potato starch and tofu cubes in a bowl with a lid and shake gently but thoroughly to coat the cubes.

Add vegetable oil to your best or biggest frying pan and crank the heat up pretty high. Fry your battered tofu cubes on each side, until they're browned and a bit crispy - 5-7 minutes per side roughly. Ideally turn them carefully one at a time to avoid them sticking together. This took four batches in our little frying pan - not ideal, but the cubes came out very well. Take the tofu out of the pan and set it aside.

Stir together the soy sauce, gochagaru, white wine vinegar, syrup, teaspoon of potato starch and mirin until combined. 

Add some more oil to the tofu pan and fry your green onions for a couple of minutes. Pour in the sauce and reduce the heat to medium - stir it regularly until it has reduced a bit and thickened up. 

To serve, stir the tofu through the sauce and top with sesame oil and sesame seeds.