General Tso's tofu

General Tso's chicken is a Chinese-American dish, developed in the United States in the second half of the twentieth century from Hunanese cooking and adapted heavily for American tastes. It is not a dish you would find in Hunan, and calling it Chinese-American rather than Chinese is the accurate description.

What makes it work as a tofu recipe is that the sauce was already designed to cling to a crisp fried surface. Tofu takes that treatment better than most vegetables do, because a starched crust is structurally similar to what the sauce was built for.

The whole difficulty is timing. The sauce thickens in about ninety seconds and the crust surrenders in about thirty, so the tofu goes back in at the very end.

Ingredients

Tofu

• 1 block (14 to 16 oz) extra-firm tofu, pressed 20 to 30 minutes
• 2 tablespoons cornstarch, plus 2 teaspoons for the sauce
• Half a teaspoon of fine salt
• 3 tablespoons neutral oil for cooking

Sauce

• 3 tablespoons soy sauce
• 3 tablespoons water or vegetable stock
• 2 tablespoons rice vinegar
• 2 tablespoons brown sugar or maple syrup
• 1 tablespoon tomato paste
• 3 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 teaspoon grated fresh ginger
• 4 to 6 dried red chilies, or half a teaspoon of chili flakes
• Green onion and sesame seeds, to finish

The tomato paste is not traditional and it is doing real work: it adds body and a faint sweetness that keeps the sauce from tasting thin. Leave it out and the sauce is noticeably flatter.

Method

1. Press and cut. Twenty to thirty minutes under weight, three quarter inch cubes, cut faces dried.
2. Coat. Toss with two tablespoons of cornstarch and the salt until evenly dusted. This recipe uses more starch than most here, because the crust has to survive a heavier sauce.
3. Mix the sauce. Whisk soy sauce, water, vinegar, sugar, tomato paste and the extra teaspoon of cornstarch until no lumps remain. Set it beside the stove.
4. Fry. Oil over medium-high until it shimmers. Single layer, gaps, undisturbed three to four minutes until the pieces release, then turn and continue until deeply golden. About thirteen minutes. Lift the tofu onto a plate and leave it there.
5. Build the sauce. Drop to medium. Dried chilies for fifteen seconds until they darken slightly, then garlic and ginger for twenty seconds. Pour in the whisked sauce and stir for sixty to ninety seconds until it thickens and goes glossy.
6. Combine. Tofu back in, off the heat, tossed for thirty seconds. Green onion and sesame seeds. Serve immediately with rice and steamed broccoli.

Whisk the sauce again right before it goes in. Cornstarch settles to the bottom of the bowl within a couple of minutes and a poured-off sauce will not thicken.

Where it goes wrong

The sauce stayed thin. The cornstarch settled and did not go in, or it never reached a proper simmer. It needs to bubble to activate.

It turned gluey. Too much cornstarch in the sauce, or it cooked too long after thickening. Two teaspoons is right for this quantity. One will not set it and a tablespoon turns it to paste.

The chilies burned and made everything acrid. Fifteen seconds is the whole window. If the pan is very hot from frying, let it cool for thirty seconds first.

The crust went soft. The tofu waited in the sauce. It goes in last, off the heat, and straight onto plates.

Adjusting

Sweeter is closer to the takeout version most people know. Add another tablespoon of sugar and a little more vinegar to keep it balanced. Less sweet and more vinegar moves it toward something sharper that suits rice better.

Dried chilies are mostly there for aroma rather than heat, since whole ones release relatively little. For real heat, add a teaspoon of chili garlic sauce to the sauce mixture.