Fish fragrant tofu(Yu Shiang Tofu) or Chinese fish flavor tofu is tofu stir-fried with Chinese hot garlic sauce. It is one of most popular homemade tofu recipe from Sichuan Cuisine. And this 15 minutes dish is absolutely a perfect match with steamed rice. The fish fragrant sauce can help me eat up two large bowls of boring steamed rice.
Tofu is always on the top of my ingredients. I love to drink soy milk and eat Mapo tofu very much. Fish fragrant sauce or yu shiang sauce (鱼香) is a famous flavor in Sichuan cuisine. And there are other dishes which are quite famous the taste including fragrant eggplant, you can check the recipe here Yu Xiang eggplant and the famous fish fragrant shredded pork or Yuxiang Rousi(鱼香肉丝).
The success rate of this dish is really high if you have some concept about fish fragrant sauce, which is combined by salt, soy sauce, sugar, vinegar etc. But believe me, it is really easy.
I choose fresh tofu cube this time in order to get a softer texture and taste. You can use regular tofu of cause. And the version provided today is without minced pork and thus can make it a vegan friendly dish.Come to see the ingredients firstly.
The most special and essential ingredient of this dish is Sichuan style pickled peppers. If I know that it is really very hard to find, please replace with fresh chili peppers directly or follow the steps to make some treatment.
Firstly chop the chili peppers and then add some salt and wine to pickle for around 2 hours. Though the taste is different from the real pickled peppers, but this process can help to get a similar taste.
Additionally, you can make your own pickled peppers at home with the recipes pickled vegetables Sichuan style here or find other ways to pickle some peppers for daily usage.
- 1 box of fresh or regular firm tofu , cut into small cubes.
- 2 spring onions , white part and green part separated
- 1 garlic clove , finely chopped
- 1 root ginger , finely chopped
- 4 ~5 pickled chili peppers , cut into small sections
- 1 tablespoon starch
- 1/2 tablespoon vinegar
- 1 tablespoon light soy sauce
- 1 tablespoon water
- 1 teaspoon sugar
- 2 teaspoons chili oil , you can replace it with sesame oil if you do not like spicy taste
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Cut the tofu cubes into small cubes around 2 cm.
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Prepare a bowl and add water,chili oil,soy sauce, vinegar, sugar,sugar and starch together. Set aside.
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Heat up oil in pan, put garlic, ginger and white part sections of spring onions to stir-fry for about 1 minute or until aroma.
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Put tofu cubes in pan and softly stir-fry. If you are using fresh tofu, only back push please.
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Pour in the sauce made in step 2 and cook for 2 minutes.
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Sprinkle some chopped green onions on top and serve hot.
For a stronger taste, you can add some doubanjiang just like making mapo tofu especially when the pickled chili peppers are not available.
hi gourmet! 🙂 why is the recipe called fish-fragrant?.. I could´t find any fish souce in the ingredients. I am confused… by the way: I LOVE your website and tried quite a few recipes already. greets from Germany
Haha Tam,
Nice question!!! Really. There are lots of interesting Chinese dish names that are quite confusing. For this one, the sauce was firstly used to cook fish in family houses in Sichuan province. Then the sauce is further developed as a flavor, used on many other dishes like fish-fragrant tofu, fish-fragrant eggplant etc. And they are extremely popular in China now.
Thank you for this recipe. When I lived in Chongqing, 鱼香肉丝 and 鱼香茄子 were my favorites! Now I’m vegan, and back in the US, and I wanted to see if I could make the dish with tofu. I have some 鱼香肉丝调料 a friend in China sent me, but it has far too many calories and I’m not sure why… maybe too much oil? Anyway, I’ll try your recipe and use some 豆瓣酱 to enhance the taste.
Hello Elaine,
thank you for the many wonderful recipes on your website. 🙂 I was wondering if you use a special kind of wine and vinegar in this recipe or if any kind will do. Thank you.
Karin,
I use very basic Chinese shaoxing wine and black vinegar.
Great recipe! Easy to follow and it was delicious!
I tried the recipe and my husband (being Asian and very skeptical about Asian recipes online) actually loved it as well. The only alteration was adding ground pork and using frozen Thai red peppers instead of pickling peppers. This gave a more spicy kick, but it was so yummy. I love fish tofu and this was a very simple and quick recipe to make for dinner.
Thanks Vue for the feedback. I use fresh Thai peppers for this dish from time to time too.