Agedashi Tofu (Fried Tofu with Soy-Dashi)

Wednesday I made J. Kenji Lopez-ALt’s Agedashi Tofu (Fried Tofu with Soy-Dashi) recipe from his The Wok cookbook.

I have had agedashi tofu in restaurants and made it once before myself using this recipe from No Recipes which I thought turned out well.

For the sauce, Kenji directs to simmer dashi, mirin, and soy sauce. I used hondashi to make the dashi since I had it on hand and was running short on time.

For the tofu, the recipe calls for “firm or extra-firm silken tofu, cut into 3/4-inch cubes” and tossed in a mixture of potato starch and flour. These cubes are then fried a couple minutes until golden. For whatever reason, my tofu popped badly several times as it fried. Thankfully no one was nearby when it happened, but I did get a few oil splatters on my shirt. One cube popped right out of the oil and onto the floor.

To serve, the tofu is put into bowls with some of the hot dashi mix, sliced scallions, katsuobushi, and grated daikon.

A photo of the agedashi tofu in a bowl on a cutting board. The soy-dashi sauce comes about halfway up the fried tofu pieces. — The finished dish

The end result was good, but the frying was stressful because of all of the popping. I don’t remember that happening with the No Recipes recipe. One of my pieces had clearly exploded from the inside. It seems the tofu interior steamed and the pieces popped like popcorn. The No Recipes recipe does a few things differently. It cuts the pieces into larger squares, it salts and then drains the tofu before coating, and it shallow fries (with a flip midway) instead of deep fries. My guess is the first two differences have the greatest impact on preventing pops.

I might make this again, just to see if it has the same problems, but really the No Recipes method yielded as good (if not better) results and a fraction of the stress.

I am cooking my way through J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s The Wok cookbook. Read more about it.