Make your own easy chickpea tofu and enjoy it combined with the fresh flavours of salty and sweet sauce with ginger and garlic and topped with toasted peanuts.
Prep Time5 minutesminutes
Cook Time10 minutesminutes
Setting Time1 hourhour
Total Time1 hourhour15 minutesminutes
Servings 4servings
Ingredients
Tofu
1cup(120g)gram flour(also known as besan or chickpea flour)
In a medium saucepan, mix the gram flour, salt and turmeric.
1 cup gram flour, 1 pinch turmeric, ½ tsp salt
Add about a third of the water (1 cup) and whisk together until the batter is smooth with no lumps.
Stir in the remaining water (2 cups) and whisk until smooth again.
Heat the pan on medium heat, and whisk often. At first it may be very foamy, but this will decrease as the mixture thickens.
Cook for around 10 minutes, until the mixture gets thicker and thicker. It's ready to take off the heat when it's so thick that it starts to cling to the whisk and there's a permanent thin film of batter at the bottom of the pan. See notes for more tips.
Pour the mixture into a container (a cake pan, dish or Tupperware will work) and spread it evenly. Do this quickly, before it cools down and firms up.
Let the tofu set on a work surface for about an hour until firm and ready to cut.
Turn the container upside down onto a board, and you can slice or dice your tofu as required.
Serving
For the sauce: Press the garlic, chop the spring onion, grate the ginger, and mix them with all the other sauce ingredients: soy sauce, rice vinegar, brown sugar, oil and chilli flakes.
6 cloves garlic, 2 spring onions, 4 tsp ginger, ¼ cup soy sauce, 1 ½ tbsp rice vinegar, 1 ½ tbsp brown sugar, 2 tbsp oil, ½ tsp chilli flakes
Frying the tofu: In a non-stick frying pan, heat 2 tbsp of oil and fry the tofu slices on medium-high heat for about 3-5 minutes on both sides, until golden brown and crisp. After turning over, add more oil if needed. TIP: Make sure the pan is properly hot before you add the tofu, to reduce the risk of sticking.
Toasting peanuts: Coarsely chop the peanuts and briefly toast them in a frying pan on medium-high heat.
4 tbsp peanuts
Serving up: Serve the burmese tofu topped with a generous drizzle of sauce and sprinkle of toasted peanuts. Have salad or stir-fried greens on the side.
Notes
Here’s how to know when the chickpea flour mix has reached the right point to stop cooking:
Whisking should become harder and more effort
Instead of flowing in ribbons and easily running off the whisk the mixture should cling to the whisk
When you stir, the trail made by the whisk should hold shape, not level off
When pouring out the mixture, it should be so thick that you will need to use a spatula to scrape it out of the pan and level it off in the container.
Our top tips for frying are:
Use a really good non stick or seasoned pan
Heat up the oil well before adding the tofu
Don’t try and move the pieces around too much before they have formed a good crust. Trying to move or turn them too soon can result in the crispy layer separating from the piece.
This recipe makes approximately 750g of chickpea tofu or the equivalent of two shop bought blocks of tofu.If you don't use all your tofu immediately, it can be stored in the fridge for 3 days in a covered container. Simply drain away any extra water before using.