Ok, before we get into the notes… naming conventions. Sometimes, on menus and the like, you might see this product that we were talking about in the video as ‘tofu skin’. We don’t like using that English name for this stuff, seeing how it can quite easily get confused with *another* tofu product that’s usually translated with the same name: Fupi (腐皮). Fupi - tofu skin - is made in an entirely different way, using the coagulated skin from soy milk. Referring to tofu sheets as ‘tofu skin’ definitely isn’t *wrong* or anything (as I’ll explain in a second), but IMO it can be quite confusing. So on this channel, the naming conventions/translations we chose to go with are: - Tofu Sheets = Qianzhang = 千张. Made by pressing layers of tofu pudding into firm sheets. - Tofu Skins = Fupi = 腐皮. Made from soymilk skin. 1. So. Why do some people translate this stuff as ‘tofu skin’? Well, as Steph touched on in the outro, up north it’s quite common to see this stuff - Qianzhang - referred to as “Doupi” (豆皮), which is a word that could also be conceivably translated as ‘Tofu Skin’. In order to explain all of this stuff clearly we’d have to give you a quick Chinese language lesson, but I’m worried that I’m already bogging down these notes with this stuff. If anyone's curious, drop a line and I'll edit in an explanation. 2. For any of these recipes, you can cut your tofu sheets into any shape you like. 3. For the red braised tofu sheets, we decided to re-test the recipe after filming one more time (it’s a pretty easy dish - most of the testing here was dedicated to the vegetarian duck, so we only had a couple tests with the braise), and decided on 25 minutes instead of 20. Also, be sure to do the cover with the lid ajar. We make this clear in the recipes in the description, so always trust those written recipes over anything. 4. Covering with the lid ajar isn’t a super common practice in Chinese kitchens - this is a practice where our background in Western cooking is kind of shining through. See, traditionally for braises claypots tended to be the vessel of choice, and with claypots you just simmer with the lid on. Of course, claypots breathe a lot better than metal cookware, so still allow for reduction even with the lid on. We’ve gone back and forth on this channel between choosing to braise covered or uncovered… I think in the future we’ll just be a bit more self-confident and do the lid ajar thing. 5. I think if I was cooking for a vegetarian, like, tomorrow… the red braised tofu sheets with eggs would probably be my go-to centerpiece. What an awesome dish. 6. There’s many ways to prepare the tofu sheets for the vegetarian fried duck - we’ve seen a lot of people soak the tofu sheets in water w/ baking soda instead. One of the hard things with that dish is making sure that the tofu doesn’t shred. We simply found that the blanch was able to keep things intact a bit better. That’s also why Steph added the sauce to the stir fry before adding the tofu sheets - even in a brief stir fry, it’s very easy for the tofu sheets to get ‘caught’ on the wok and break. 7. Note that for whatever reason, using Kan Sui or Sodium Carbonate instead of baking soda does *not* seem to work. We assumed that the textural difference was due to a pH thing, but… nope. Kan Sui seems to firm things up, not make them fluffy and soft. Honestly, I’ve got no clue why and if there’s anyone out there with a chemistry/food science background, I’d love to hear an explanation.
Thanks for the explainer on how the language use varies by region. That kind of stuff is really fascinating to me. When I used to live in Jinan, my roommate and I used to have similar conversations about how restaurant menus were always so idiosyncratic in terms of the names they used for dishes. Case in point: a hot dish using tofu sheets (where we were in Shandong it seemed like it was usually referred to as 豆腐皮) stir fried with garlic, dried chilies and cilantro that had about a million different names depending on where you were ordering it (香辣豆腐皮, 炒辣豆腐丝, 酸辣豆腐皮, etc.). All basically the same dish, but no consistent name. Made it difficult to find a good recipe for it when I moved home (even though it seems like the kind of thing that should be pretty straightforward). Anyway, this was an awesome video, giving some well deserved spotlight to one of my favorite ingredients that is criminally under appreciated outside China!
I'm not anything like an expert, but I do know something about the chemistry of pH in cheese, which is amusingly similar to tofu in a number of ways. For cheese, everyone knows that some cheeses melt better than others, but what they don't know is that the poorly melting ones exist on both ends of the pH spectrum. It's mediated by calcium, but the short version is cheeses that have not been acidified at all, like juustoleipa aka bread cheese and halloumi, do not melt and can be fried, and cheeses that are very acidic, like feta, also do not melt, but in a different way. Mozzarella can be tricky to make because you have to balance the pH just right or it will have the wrong texture. This explains more: www.cheesescience.org/melt.html
It looks great indeed; reminds me of the döner-like seitan that some restaurants have had here. A question to both of you (Andong and CCD): How long does Chinese-style fried onion oil keep in the fridge? I've spent a while researching this and no-one seems to know. I'm referring to the risk of botulism with infused oils and the lack of an acidification process as described in this paper: www.extension.uidaho.edu/publishing/pdf/PNW/PNW664.pdf There seems to be little to no documentation on whether the acidification step (which I think reduces flavor) is necessary if the onion and/or oil is heated high & long enough. Most sources just vaguely state that c. botulinum spores require "above 100 °C" to destroy, as though it isn't possible to heat something beyond that temperature. (Hello, oil can go over 200 °C... 🙄)
@@S3lvah We're not Andong, but ultimately when it comes to flavored oils you simply need to evaluate how paranoid you are about botulism. The vast majority of botulism cases come from improper canning, not flavored oils. As Steph told me once "if stored chili oil could kill you, there'd be no one left in the province of Sichuan". But flippancy aside, it's certainly theoretically possible to get botulism from flavored oils. I don't have any sources to back this up at the pull of the finger, but you're pretty much always safe consuming flavored oil within the month. After that, it really depends on your risk tolerance. For Steph that risk tolerance is "eh, relax! It's fine!" and she'll happily consume stuff that's approaching a year old. For me (Chris), I start feeling a bit uneasy around the 2-3 month mark. At some level, it's kind of like asking 'how fast is too fast driving a car?' The answer's going to be alot different depending on who you are.
Yeah we've been feeling it too. Moving forward, out of our three videos a month we're thinking that I (Chris) will narrate two, and Steph will narrate one.
My family is keto and I was thinking it would be a good noodle replacement. I don't mind just using cabbage in place of noodles, but I would legit like something more like the real thing.
Last time I was in harbin while flying to Russia, there was a lady selling mian jin skewers. The sauce she put on them was so good. Would you two be able to make a video on that?
Overlooked? Overlooked? I didn’t even know it existed😂😂😂 Very interesting!!!!!!!!!!!!! Your dog is so adorable. Sitting there thinking “give me the tofu sheet”!
I'd seen a couple of UA-cam recipes for tofu skin but until I saw some in my local Asian market I never thought I'd try cooking with it. Your video may be the one to get me to finally try it. Thanks so much! (Also, I had a schnauzer as a kid...yours is gorgeous!)
Commenting on the most recent video for visibility: have you both ever thought of writing a cookbook? You both have such extensive culinary and contextual knowledge-I'd buy it in a heartbeat. Please consider it!!
Made the vegetarian fried duck today and wow that was delicious. The texture was divine and the flavour was a lot more complex than I had expected from scallion + soy sauce + liaojiu + not much else, like first encountering scallion oil noodles all over again. Thanks for sharing these amazing recipes!
Thank you for this video! I've been a huge fan of tofu skin since I was introduced to it by my friend a couple of years ago. Then when my wife and I were laid over in a hotel on the outskirts of Beijing we had the cold salad and have been obsessed with trying to recreate it ever since to no avail, but now we can finallty have it again. I can't wait to make these other dishes as well!
I love tofu sheets (and tofu) too! especially the vegetarian duck, I loved ordering it at restaurants when I was younger :") and the method of frying the eggs is really cool and innovative, thank you for sharing these!!
I picked up a bag of tofu sheets in the Chinese grocery store just this weekend, but couldn't figure out what I'd do with it. Now your video magically has appeared... What great timing. I'll buy some next time.
The tofu skins most known in the west are the peeled skin of simmering soy milk, the very thin layer that dries-thickens at the contact of air and gets carefully collected and then most often dried (well, real aficionados will get them fresh or make them or get them frozen). I had never seen these sheets probably because I haden't paid proper attention. I will for sure because I think I'll like them much more than the skins which I was getting bored of, I ate soooooo muuuuuch but I still think they're awsome in a thick sauce or broth :/ So thank you for this amazing video!
Hi folks. Huge fan of yours out here in Sausalito, California. You both are great teachers and mentors. I'm subscribed, of course, and have many videos bookmarked, but I'm confused about why the written recipes are on Reddit. Do you have a website where all your recipes are aggregated? Better still, would rush out to buy your cookbook, plus a couple extra copies for friends . . hint, hint. Any plans for a hard-copy cookbook?
Back when we first started the project the written recipes for /r/cooking were basically the content (and the videos the side content). Over the years that sort of flipped, and these days I usually just do description box recipes (which're a lot less taxing on our end). The recipes are aggregated pretty well here on the channel, I think :) I don't think the world needs another blog. Re a cookbook, we've got some long term plans, but it's a lot of work. Slowly slowly
I‘m really happy Steph is doing more narrating! Also I‘ll never forget the exact word order of you describing longyau (or 滑锅?) One thing I‘d wish for tho! If you could include the tones in your pinyin that would be awesome for people learning Chinese like me :)
LOVED these while living in Beijing. We had a lot of dishes that would serve small squares of it that we would use to make tiny burritos with whatever we were eating. Went really well as wraps for the peking sauce pork. I always hated tofu and legit thought these were a kind of noodle at first. This was definitely the thing that made me go "maybe this tofu stuff isn't so bad". Very hype to know what they are now. Now I just need a recipe for the spicey dry pot potatoes we used to get and you'll have hit most of my favorites haha
I was just intrigued by the title of this video hence I watched it, and now I know I shall thank Heaven for doing it!! :D I made liangban qianzhang using your recipe and it was so ridiculously easy, and yet tasted so good! Me and my partner both loved it and I'm pretty much sure it wasn't the last time I made it. I'd love to try your other recipes with qianzhang, but... I'm afraid next time I buy it I just won't be able to stop myself from doing it liangban again! Thanks a lot and you are guys having new fan here :) :)
99 Ranch Market confirmed! Lol! We have those all over outside Seattle. There is also a Chinese restaurant in South Center that has a menu that is pretty much every recipe you two make!
Great video as usual! Was looking at this the other day in my local Asian store wondering what I could do with it. Now I know! Love how your cat magically changes into a dog at 8:00 btw!
This is what I came here to find out about, thank you for sharing. Have you only used them in place of Chinese noodle applications or in other cuisine's noodle dishes as well?
thank you for posting this. There's a lot of items I see at the local asian groc store that I'm curious about but don't know about how use/cook. This was definitely one of them!
Haha I know it's usually a bit more on-brand for us to cook an seemingly vegetarian dish... only to then fry in lard and finish it off with oyster sauce ;) If you ever have any questions for how to veg-ify something, definitely drop a line - we're always happy to help. A ton of Chinese cooking we do is meat-light, and can be easily made into tasty veg food with a simple tweak or two.
I must second this. The Tofu sheet knots soak in so much of the sauce and the flavor can be explosive when you bite into it. When these knots are cooked with meat, I often enjoy the knots more than the meat just because how much flavor they are able to absorb.
What! I am from mid Jiangsu and thought 百叶结 was an all over China thing. I watched this whole video wondering if 千张 and 百叶 are the same thing. Maybe it is similar but different regions have different names for it
I love tofu sheets, so versatile. I haven't thought about it in a while so, thank you for the reminder recipes. The nearest Asian store is about an hour away so I looked it up on Amazon and these are around $29 each!!!! Unbelievable.... I'll wait till my next Asian food haul :-(.
I love the technique of frying a hard-boiled egg... I feel like I don't see it very often but I love how it gets that lacy crunchy coating on the outside, so delicious. Also I love how the braised egg and tofu sheet dish kind of ended up looking like spaghetti and meatballs after plating!
My (Shanghainese) mom gets and cooks this somewhat frequently; it's one of the few things on this channel I was familiar with before seeing the video. Usually she cooks them as soup in knots, so it's cool to see other preparations.
I tried them the other day, and I love them they’re so tasty!! Unfortunately I can only find them in the Chinese supermarkets here but I don’t go there that often. It’s funny cuz now I see tofu noodles popping up in Korean diet food vlogs, and I’m pretty sure it’s more of a recent new trend since I hadn’t seen it before in their videos before, but I think some Korean brands must manufacture them now, but yeah still can’t find them in Korean stores over here. The Korean market is closer to me than the Chinese grocery store.
This is exactly what I needed! I love tofu sheets but the only way I knew how to prepare them was to steam them and then smother them in chili oil. These recipes will be great for the rest of my family who aren't so...... spicy tolerant.
Thank you so, SO much for this-I’ve bought them from my local Chinese market and experimented enough to know that they’re awesome but I don’t know what I’m doing! The confusion with the other tofu skin doesn’t help-the other might be better known by its Japanese name, yuba (assuming I’ve got this right...), so you might want to mention that in the future. I once had a dish made by a friend of a friend (Chinese, not sure from where) they called “vegetarian goose”. I think it was the skin, not the sheets, and it was wrapped around little minced bits, cut into rounds, and braised (?) in a spiced brown sauce. I’ve been looking for a recipe with no luck, and I would love you forever if you made it!
Yes I was about to say they’re my favourite in Vietnamese braised pork (thịt kho tàu). My family would poke them with fork when they were just fried, so they absorbed the sweet sticky flavour of the braise liquid. It does make the eggs look ugly if you go overboard, but it’s so worth it!
Yes! Kind of! Haha Confusingly, there's two products that are referred to in English as 'tofu skin' - Fupi (腐皮) and Doupi (豆皮). Doupi (豆皮) *is* Qianzhang (千张) - the former is generally the nomenclature in the north; the latter, in the east and south. Fupi (腐皮), meanwhile, is made in a quite different way that Doupi/Qianzhang - i.e. from the coagulated skin of the soymilk. Confusingly, you could make a solid case for translating *both* Doupi and Fupi as 'tofu skin' in English... which many people do. For anyone unfamiliar with Chinese reading this, 'pi' means skin... so one product is basically 'To-skin' and the other is 'Fu-skin'. Further, even in China there also seem to be some places in the country that refer to Fupi *as* Doupi... which is why we opt for the eastern/southern naming conventions, which we think is a lot clearer. So for naming, we chose to go with this on this channel: 1. Tofu Sheets = Qianzhang = 千张. Made by pressing layers of tofu pudding into firm sheets. 2. Tofu Skins = Fupi = 腐皮. Made from soymilk skin.
@@ChineseCookingDemystified haha thanks a lot. this explains my confusion when I asked for tofu skin for hotpot and I was given tofu sheets at the supermarket.
Been re creating so many of your dishes at home and they've all been incredible ! Would you maybe be able to do a beef in black bean sauce or just "things in black bean sauce " vid? Would love to add more takeout classics to my repertoire !
So yeah! Doing a video strictly on it would kinda feel like cheating haha, simply because we've done so much stuff using that flavor profile before. Beef in black bean sauce is here in our 'stir fried beef 101' video: ua-cam.com/video/C1QLbJnkpo0/v-deo.html Steamed squash with black bean sauce is here in our 'over rice dishes' video: ua-cam.com/video/g5Qq_w7hLR8/v-deo.html And we've got stir fried clams in black bean sauce here: ua-cam.com/video/ciLCT_7oOG0/v-deo.html Coulda sworn we had one more, but I'm blanking. Maybe not Definitely a possibility to do a dedicated video if we've busy one week and are fresh off a spate of failed test batches of something ;)
When i was working in china i was addicted to this Sheet Tofu , at Wallmart i always took it cold as salad and in restaurant warm with pork meat and spicy bell pepper. At California Beef Noodle King Retaurants they also had a very good salad of Tofu but theses Tofu looked similar like the Italian Penne Noodles (i think it was the String or Stick Tofu you can also get dried in supermarkets here). I agree that this kind of Tofu is pretty much unknown here in western countries and i am also sure if asian restaurants would just offfer dishes made by this Tofu it would become very popular soon ..not only by vegetarians but also as alternative for noodles. In the supermarkets i always saw the dried String Tofu
Can't wait to try these out! I have some tofu skins that I bought dried - I was hoping you would talk about the dry ones? I guess we soak them in water to make soft?
Was hoping to see a Sichuan dry pot dish. One of the Chinese restaurants close to me serves this tofu in dry pot form but I’m gonna try one of these recipes.
Ok, before we get into the notes… naming conventions. Sometimes, on menus and the like, you might see this product that we were talking about in the video as ‘tofu skin’. We don’t like using that English name for this stuff, seeing how it can quite easily get confused with *another* tofu product that’s usually translated with the same name: Fupi (腐皮). Fupi - tofu skin - is made in an entirely different way, using the coagulated skin from soy milk. Referring to tofu sheets as ‘tofu skin’ definitely isn’t *wrong* or anything (as I’ll explain in a second), but IMO it can be quite confusing. So on this channel, the naming conventions/translations we chose to go with are:
- Tofu Sheets = Qianzhang = 千张. Made by pressing layers of tofu pudding into firm sheets.
- Tofu Skins = Fupi = 腐皮. Made from soymilk skin.
1. So. Why do some people translate this stuff as ‘tofu skin’? Well, as Steph touched on in the outro, up north it’s quite common to see this stuff - Qianzhang - referred to as “Doupi” (豆皮), which is a word that could also be conceivably translated as ‘Tofu Skin’. In order to explain all of this stuff clearly we’d have to give you a quick Chinese language lesson, but I’m worried that I’m already bogging down these notes with this stuff. If anyone's curious, drop a line and I'll edit in an explanation.
2. For any of these recipes, you can cut your tofu sheets into any shape you like.
3. For the red braised tofu sheets, we decided to re-test the recipe after filming one more time (it’s a pretty easy dish - most of the testing here was dedicated to the vegetarian duck, so we only had a couple tests with the braise), and decided on 25 minutes instead of 20. Also, be sure to do the cover with the lid ajar. We make this clear in the recipes in the description, so always trust those written recipes over anything.
4. Covering with the lid ajar isn’t a super common practice in Chinese kitchens - this is a practice where our background in Western cooking is kind of shining through. See, traditionally for braises claypots tended to be the vessel of choice, and with claypots you just simmer with the lid on. Of course, claypots breathe a lot better than metal cookware, so still allow for reduction even with the lid on. We’ve gone back and forth on this channel between choosing to braise covered or uncovered… I think in the future we’ll just be a bit more self-confident and do the lid ajar thing.
5. I think if I was cooking for a vegetarian, like, tomorrow… the red braised tofu sheets with eggs would probably be my go-to centerpiece. What an awesome dish.
6. There’s many ways to prepare the tofu sheets for the vegetarian fried duck - we’ve seen a lot of people soak the tofu sheets in water w/ baking soda instead. One of the hard things with that dish is making sure that the tofu doesn’t shred. We simply found that the blanch was able to keep things intact a bit better. That’s also why Steph added the sauce to the stir fry before adding the tofu sheets - even in a brief stir fry, it’s very easy for the tofu sheets to get ‘caught’ on the wok and break.
7. Note that for whatever reason, using Kan Sui or Sodium Carbonate instead of baking soda does *not* seem to work. We assumed that the textural difference was due to a pH thing, but… nope. Kan Sui seems to firm things up, not make them fluffy and soft. Honestly, I’ve got no clue why and if there’s anyone out there with a chemistry/food science background, I’d love to hear an explanation.
What is the texture/flavor like for the eggs? I would have thought 7 minutes + frying + 25 minutes braising would be way too long!
The eggs have a similar consistency to hard boiled eggs in the end :)
Thanks for the explainer on how the language use varies by region. That kind of stuff is really fascinating to me. When I used to live in Jinan, my roommate and I used to have similar conversations about how restaurant menus were always so idiosyncratic in terms of the names they used for dishes. Case in point: a hot dish using tofu sheets (where we were in Shandong it seemed like it was usually referred to as 豆腐皮) stir fried with garlic, dried chilies and cilantro that had about a million different names depending on where you were ordering it (香辣豆腐皮, 炒辣豆腐丝, 酸辣豆腐皮, etc.). All basically the same dish, but no consistent name. Made it difficult to find a good recipe for it when I moved home (even though it seems like the kind of thing that should be pretty straightforward). Anyway, this was an awesome video, giving some well deserved spotlight to one of my favorite ingredients that is criminally under appreciated outside China!
Love you both! You guys are freakin' amazing!!!
I'm not anything like an expert, but I do know something about the chemistry of pH in cheese, which is amusingly similar to tofu in a number of ways. For cheese, everyone knows that some cheeses melt better than others, but what they don't know is that the poorly melting ones exist on both ends of the pH spectrum. It's mediated by calcium, but the short version is cheeses that have not been acidified at all, like juustoleipa aka bread cheese and halloumi, do not melt and can be fried, and cheeses that are very acidic, like feta, also do not melt, but in a different way. Mozzarella can be tricky to make because you have to balance the pH just right or it will have the wrong texture.
This explains more:
www.cheesescience.org/melt.html
Love the vegetarian / vegan friendly recipes!!
Need more! There must be millions of amazing vegetarian/vegan chinese dishes, but they are hard to get at restaurants and rarely in recipe books.
@@machematix yesssss but fortunately a lot of them seem easy to veganize!
@@machematix not strictly chinese but you should look into buddhist cuisine! Great chinese/korean/pan asian recipes that are inherently vegan
Love this tofu and your recipe ideas!! Somehow I‘m most intrigued by the stir-frying of whole eggs though which I must try now
It looks great indeed; reminds me of the döner-like seitan that some restaurants have had here.
A question to both of you (Andong and CCD): How long does Chinese-style fried onion oil keep in the fridge? I've spent a while researching this and no-one seems to know. I'm referring to the risk of botulism with infused oils and the lack of an acidification process as described in this paper: www.extension.uidaho.edu/publishing/pdf/PNW/PNW664.pdf
There seems to be little to no documentation on whether the acidification step (which I think reduces flavor) is necessary if the onion and/or oil is heated high & long enough.
Most sources just vaguely state that c. botulinum spores require "above 100 °C" to destroy, as though it isn't possible to heat something beyond that temperature. (Hello, oil can go over 200 °C... 🙄)
@@S3lvah We're not Andong, but ultimately when it comes to flavored oils you simply need to evaluate how paranoid you are about botulism. The vast majority of botulism cases come from improper canning, not flavored oils. As Steph told me once "if stored chili oil could kill you, there'd be no one left in the province of Sichuan". But flippancy aside, it's certainly theoretically possible to get botulism from flavored oils.
I don't have any sources to back this up at the pull of the finger, but you're pretty much always safe consuming flavored oil within the month. After that, it really depends on your risk tolerance. For Steph that risk tolerance is "eh, relax! It's fine!" and she'll happily consume stuff that's approaching a year old. For me (Chris), I start feeling a bit uneasy around the 2-3 month mark. At some level, it's kind of like asking 'how fast is too fast driving a car?' The answer's going to be alot different depending on who you are.
Yeah! Gotta braise them afterwards though :)
Indians also fry eggs like that to put into curries. 🤩
Heating the oil 100°C + destroys the bacteria and toxins, so if you want to make sure that its fine, simply reheat at some point.
You guys have introduced me to a whole world of cooking I never even knew existed. Thank you so much for your hard work!
You had me at “accidentally vegetarian”
Steph at 0:00 trying to trick me into eating a microfibre cloth
You’re not gonna fool me! I know a prank when I see one!!
hahahahaha lol
Your dog is trying to do the chameleon tonuge technique to eat the tofu sheet xD
Hayek sometimes likes to lick air. Has since he was a puppy. We're... not sure why.
@@ChineseCookingDemystified Maybe the air around you, always smells yummy, beacuse of the great stuff you are always cooking :)
So cute
@@ChineseCookingDemystified Tasting the air. All that yumminess.
I like how the dog turned into a cat and back into a dog. Neat trick!
I know, right!
You held that tofu sheet like it was a microfiber cloth.
I was thinking how this could be turned into a piece of edible clothing hahaha
It looks sooo good !! I’d love to see more vegetarian Chinese recipes like these !! Thanks for your amazing videos :)
Stir fried hard boiled eggs. Chinese cooking never ceases to amaze me.
I really like this setup with Steph doing a voiceover. Feels more chill
Yeah we've been feeling it too. Moving forward, out of our three videos a month we're thinking that I (Chris) will narrate two, and Steph will narrate one.
Vegetarian food and a sneaky cat at the end! Amazing video :D
I love these, as a diabetic I use these a lot of the time to replace wheat or rice noodles. They are very versatile
thats what i was thinking, it could replace carbs. how does it taste and texture? i have never seen these before but would like to try it
My family is keto and I was thinking it would be a good noodle replacement. I don't mind just using cabbage in place of noodles, but I would legit like something more like the real thing.
Last time I was in harbin while flying to Russia, there was a lady selling mian jin skewers. The sauce she put on them was so good. Would you two be able to make a video on that?
OMG i love mianjin skewers!! Ate them almost every day when I was in Jinan. I would die for the recipe!
Overlooked? Overlooked? I didn’t even know it existed😂😂😂
Very interesting!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Your dog is so adorable. Sitting there thinking “give me the tofu sheet”!
Same here O.O I'll look!
Lol me neither
They are very interesting!
It's so refreshing to see your informed, articulate presentation of cooking techniques & insights from your own culture 💕
How did I forget this existed?! When I lived in China I ate so much of it! Off to T&T!
Loved the narration by Steph!
I'd seen a couple of UA-cam recipes for tofu skin but until I saw some in my local Asian market I never thought I'd try cooking with it. Your video may be the one to get me to finally try it. Thanks so much! (Also, I had a schnauzer as a kid...yours is gorgeous!)
Commenting on the most recent video for visibility: have you both ever thought of writing a cookbook? You both have such extensive culinary and contextual knowledge-I'd buy it in a heartbeat. Please consider it!!
Made the vegetarian fried duck today and wow that was delicious. The texture was divine and the flavour was a lot more complex than I had expected from scallion + soy sauce + liaojiu + not much else, like first encountering scallion oil noodles all over again. Thanks for sharing these amazing recipes!
Thank you for this video! I've been a huge fan of tofu skin since I was introduced to it by my friend a couple of years ago. Then when my wife and I were laid over in a hotel on the outskirts of Beijing we had the cold salad and have been obsessed with trying to recreate it ever since to no avail, but now we can finallty have it again. I can't wait to make these other dishes as well!
My absolute favourite thing. Noodles without the heavy carb dose. Honestly underwhelmed by wheat noodles these days. All I wanna eat.
I love tofu sheets (and tofu) too! especially the vegetarian duck, I loved ordering it at restaurants when I was younger :") and the method of frying the eggs is really cool and innovative, thank you for sharing these!!
So glad to get some ideas of what to make with this! Thank you ❤️
I picked up a bag of tofu sheets in the Chinese grocery store just this weekend, but couldn't figure out what I'd do with it. Now your video magically has appeared... What great timing. I'll buy some next time.
Google is obviously spying on the both of us... ;)
The tofu skins most known in the west are the peeled skin of simmering soy milk, the very thin layer that dries-thickens at the contact of air and gets carefully collected and then most often dried (well, real aficionados will get them fresh or make them or get them frozen). I had never seen these sheets probably because I haden't paid proper attention. I will for sure because I think I'll like them much more than the skins which I was getting bored of, I ate soooooo muuuuuch but I still think they're awsome in a thick sauce or broth :/ So thank you for this amazing video!
Hi folks. Huge fan of yours out here in Sausalito, California. You both are great teachers and mentors. I'm subscribed, of course, and have many videos bookmarked, but I'm confused about why the written recipes are on Reddit. Do you have a website where all your recipes are aggregated? Better still, would rush out to buy your cookbook, plus a couple extra copies for friends . . hint, hint. Any plans for a hard-copy cookbook?
Back when we first started the project the written recipes for /r/cooking were basically the content (and the videos the side content). Over the years that sort of flipped, and these days I usually just do description box recipes (which're a lot less taxing on our end). The recipes are aggregated pretty well here on the channel, I think :) I don't think the world needs another blog.
Re a cookbook, we've got some long term plans, but it's a lot of work. Slowly slowly
Thank you so much! This was delicious! I'm grateful for your channel and content!
The dog was hungry this video lol. Love the vegetarian recipes from you guys! The braised qianzhang is particularly interesting, I want to try that.
Oh my gosh!!! The dog!!!! I love it! Adorable and couldn’t take my eyes off it! Lol
I‘m really happy Steph is doing more narrating! Also I‘ll never forget the exact word order of you describing longyau (or 滑锅?)
One thing I‘d wish for tho! If you could include the tones in your pinyin that would be awesome for people learning Chinese like me :)
***cat alert***
cat is present
Cat turns into Dog. Maybe not intentional editing, but it worked.
I'm here
Around 7:53 for those of you looking for the cat 😸
@@mabellemichelle Sneaky... as always :D
Never underestimate the sneakiness
LOVED these while living in Beijing. We had a lot of dishes that would serve small squares of it that we would use to make tiny burritos with whatever we were eating. Went really well as wraps for the peking sauce pork. I always hated tofu and legit thought these were a kind of noodle at first. This was definitely the thing that made me go "maybe this tofu stuff isn't so bad". Very hype to know what they are now.
Now I just need a recipe for the spicey dry pot potatoes we used to get and you'll have hit most of my favorites haha
So wonderful to see more of our chef! Glad to see your confidence growing, we love your recipes =)
Tofu skin is my favorite in hot pot, can't wait to try some of these other ways to use it.
Those fried boiled eggs just blew my mind!
I was just intrigued by the title of this video hence I watched it, and now I know I shall thank Heaven for doing it!! :D I made liangban qianzhang using your recipe and it was so ridiculously easy, and yet tasted so good! Me and my partner both loved it and I'm pretty much sure it wasn't the last time I made it. I'd love to try your other recipes with qianzhang, but... I'm afraid next time I buy it I just won't be able to stop myself from doing it liangban again! Thanks a lot and you are guys having new fan here :) :)
Thanks again for an quick expose on an item that's new to me! Also it was fun to finally see your kitty~
99 Ranch Market confirmed! Lol! We have those all over outside Seattle.
There is also a Chinese restaurant in South Center that has a menu that is pretty much every recipe you two make!
Thanks for the recipes! I will try them out. I've seen them in the Asian supermarkets here in Berlin. I love your channel! Keep the videos coming! :)
Great video as usual! Was looking at this the other day in my local Asian store wondering what I could do with it. Now I know! Love how your cat magically changes into a dog at 8:00 btw!
Hhhhhhh, I can't stop laughing
i love this! I always enjoy spicy huoguo with this. This stuff is also fits with black vinager based sause.
its also a low carb sub for noodles! I tried to use them to cook pasta dishes and it works great😋
This is what I came here to find out about, thank you for sharing. Have you only used them in place of Chinese noodle applications or in other cuisine's noodle dishes as well?
@andrewn6271 Yes i did pasta dishes and also i tried to fry them like fried noodles. i guess any kind of noodle dish would work! ☺
thank you for posting this. There's a lot of items I see at the local asian groc store that I'm curious about but don't know about how use/cook. This was definitely one of them!
I'm so happy these recipes are vegetarian ! I was expecting to see meat-flavoured tofu dishes once again ! I love your videos ❤
Haha I know it's usually a bit more on-brand for us to cook an seemingly vegetarian dish... only to then fry in lard and finish it off with oyster sauce ;)
If you ever have any questions for how to veg-ify something, definitely drop a line - we're always happy to help. A ton of Chinese cooking we do is meat-light, and can be easily made into tasty veg food with a simple tweak or two.
sounds like a great gluten-friendly and keto-friendly way to replace noodles!
It is but the taste is nothing like wheat
I just bought some today and was wondering what to do. Thank you!
I just tried this recipe, delish! Thanks Chris and Co.
Awesome to see more vegetarian recipes! thanks!
Also there is a variant of Qianzhang in mid-Jiangsu called 百叶结, which usually cooked with Red-Braised Pork or Lou Mei
I must second this. The Tofu sheet knots soak in so much of the sauce and the flavor can be explosive when you bite into it. When these knots are cooked with meat, I often enjoy the knots more than the meat just because how much flavor they are able to absorb.
What! I am from mid Jiangsu and thought 百叶结 was an all over China thing. I watched this whole video wondering if 千张 and 百叶 are the same thing. Maybe it is similar but different regions have different names for it
Happy to see these are vegetarian recipes, hope we get to see more of them.
I love tofu sheets, so versatile. I haven't thought about it in a while so, thank you for the reminder recipes. The nearest Asian store is about an hour away so I looked it up on Amazon and these are around $29 each!!!! Unbelievable.... I'll wait till my next Asian food haul :-(.
I love the technique of frying a hard-boiled egg... I feel like I don't see it very often but I love how it gets that lacy crunchy coating on the outside, so delicious.
Also I love how the braised egg and tofu sheet dish kind of ended up looking like spaghetti and meatballs after plating!
Thank you for your fantastic recipes and your cute puppy!
My (Shanghainese) mom gets and cooks this somewhat frequently; it's one of the few things on this channel I was familiar with before seeing the video. Usually she cooks them as soup in knots, so it's cool to see other preparations.
Your "accidental vegetarian" dishes are always super exciting. Thanks for the great video!
Where I live I can't find exactly this Tofu, only Fuzhu (腐竹), which is similar but not the same. I'd love to see some recipes for Fuzhu here =))
I tried them the other day, and I love them they’re so tasty!! Unfortunately I can only find them in the Chinese supermarkets here but I don’t go there that often.
It’s funny cuz now I see tofu noodles popping up in Korean diet food vlogs, and I’m pretty sure it’s more of a recent new trend since I hadn’t seen it before in their videos before, but I think some Korean brands must manufacture them now, but yeah still can’t find them in Korean stores over here. The Korean market is closer to me than the Chinese grocery store.
Amazing episode! Very clear directions!
Thank you for making more vegetarian recipes!
This is exactly what I needed! I love tofu sheets but the only way I knew how to prepare them was to steam them and then smother them in chili oil. These recipes will be great for the rest of my family who aren't so...... spicy tolerant.
I love these tofu strips!!! It's so good in mala hotpot and I always pile it in my single serve hotpot restaurant haha
OMG I need to try all 3 of these! And yes, please hit us with that Chinese language lesson! I'm failing horribly at Duo Lingo!
Thank you so, SO much for this-I’ve bought them from my local Chinese market and experimented enough to know that they’re awesome but I don’t know what I’m doing! The confusion with the other tofu skin doesn’t help-the other might be better known by its Japanese name, yuba (assuming I’ve got this right...), so you might want to mention that in the future.
I once had a dish made by a friend of a friend (Chinese, not sure from where) they called “vegetarian goose”. I think it was the skin, not the sheets, and it was wrapped around little minced bits, cut into rounds, and braised (?) in a spiced brown sauce. I’ve been looking for a recipe with no luck, and I would love you forever if you made it!
Tofu skin is my favorite hot pot ingredient.
i have never seen eggs fried like this lol, interesting
I have seen them like this in Indonesia for Terasi Eggs
So true, they look like duck eggs, they're soooo big!
Fried boiled eggs braised with pork belly is pretty common in China and Vietnam.
Yes I was about to say they’re my favourite in Vietnamese braised pork (thịt kho tàu). My family would poke them with fork when they were just fried, so they absorbed the sweet sticky flavour of the braise liquid. It does make the eggs look ugly if you go overboard, but it’s so worth it!
that makes the much more flavourful
This looks a lot better for low-carb noodles than that shirataki stuff.
As always, fantastic viewing. Great work.
This looks like more the kind of tofu I would enjoy. I hope to find it thank-you gof the guide and recipes!
looks great! is this the same as tofu skin (豆腐皮儿) by any chance?
Yes! Kind of! Haha
Confusingly, there's two products that are referred to in English as 'tofu skin' - Fupi (腐皮) and Doupi (豆皮). Doupi (豆皮) *is* Qianzhang (千张) - the former is generally the nomenclature in the north; the latter, in the east and south. Fupi (腐皮), meanwhile, is made in a quite different way that Doupi/Qianzhang - i.e. from the coagulated skin of the soymilk.
Confusingly, you could make a solid case for translating *both* Doupi and Fupi as 'tofu skin' in English... which many people do. For anyone unfamiliar with Chinese reading this, 'pi' means skin... so one product is basically 'To-skin' and the other is 'Fu-skin'. Further, even in China there also seem to be some places in the country that refer to Fupi *as* Doupi... which is why we opt for the eastern/southern naming conventions, which we think is a lot clearer.
So for naming, we chose to go with this on this channel:
1. Tofu Sheets = Qianzhang = 千张. Made by pressing layers of tofu pudding into firm sheets.
2. Tofu Skins = Fupi = 腐皮. Made from soymilk skin.
To make matters worse, apparently fupi is called doupi in Taiwan
@@ChineseCookingDemystified haha thanks a lot. this explains my confusion when I asked for tofu skin for hotpot and I was given tofu sheets at the supermarket.
Wonderful clip Steph! We call this Yuba in Australia. A good low carb alternative!
Now I know what the delicious salad I had in Shanghai was... tofu strips salad. Incredibly delicious and satisfying.
I have been looking for the tofu skin salad recipe for so long thank you :))))
Ever since I tried Mala Xiang Guo for the first time, I love this tofu.
Ok the egg 🥚 frying in that way mind blowing 🤯....to me 🤫....dishes seem simple..thanks for sharing
Very good inspiration with the stir fried hard boiled egg! You just gave me inspiration for a new recipe :)
Amazing!!! More vegan/vegetarian recipes please 😋
Your doggie also loves it! Great video, too!
Been re creating so many of your dishes at home and they've all been incredible ! Would you maybe be able to do a beef in black bean sauce or just "things in black bean sauce " vid? Would love to add more takeout classics to my repertoire !
So yeah! Doing a video strictly on it would kinda feel like cheating haha, simply because we've done so much stuff using that flavor profile before.
Beef in black bean sauce is here in our 'stir fried beef 101' video: ua-cam.com/video/C1QLbJnkpo0/v-deo.html
Steamed squash with black bean sauce is here in our 'over rice dishes' video: ua-cam.com/video/g5Qq_w7hLR8/v-deo.html
And we've got stir fried clams in black bean sauce here: ua-cam.com/video/ciLCT_7oOG0/v-deo.html
Coulda sworn we had one more, but I'm blanking. Maybe not
Definitely a possibility to do a dedicated video if we've busy one week and are fresh off a spate of failed test batches of something ;)
I’m amazed I have never heard of this before! Seems like a great option for low carb diets.
I just bought this and not really knowing how to cook with it, I came to UA-cam land. Your video explained a great deal, thanking You!
When i was working in china i was addicted to this Sheet Tofu , at Wallmart i always took it cold as salad and in restaurant warm with pork meat and spicy bell pepper. At California Beef Noodle King Retaurants they also had a very good salad of Tofu but theses Tofu looked similar like the Italian Penne Noodles (i think it was the String or Stick Tofu you can also get dried in supermarkets here).
I agree that this kind of Tofu is pretty much unknown here in western countries and i am also sure if asian restaurants would just offfer dishes made by this Tofu
it would become very popular soon ..not only by vegetarians but also as alternative for noodles. In the supermarkets i always saw the dried String Tofu
Wow. Had no idea about this product. I can't wait to try this in my curry laksa recipe!!!
I'm from the north so we call it 豆腐皮. It's soooooo good in hot pot, practically a must have!
Who gave that dog peanut butter?!?!...😂🤣
Hello, great video as usual can you please make some videos about Chinese authentic desserts and sweets, thanks
Can't wait to try these out! I have some tofu skins that I bought dried - I was hoping you would talk about the dry ones? I guess we soak them in water to make soft?
love seeing more vegie recipes!!!!
Sheets are way better than actual tofu. Never liked the normal stuff but I love the dried sheets.
Wow!! Would u have other recipes for the tofu sheets please 😁
I had "vegetarian duck" before without knowing at all what it was. I'm amazed it's actually tofu, and it's really a great food!
Ooh 😮 It might be interesting to make a mapo tofu-inspired noodle dish using this stuff.
Heck yeah All-Steph video!
KITTY AT THE END.
Was hoping to see a Sichuan dry pot dish. One of the Chinese restaurants close to me serves this tofu in dry pot form but I’m gonna try one of these recipes.
This is outragous! I saw the dog so many times but I didn't even know you had a cat too! Please show the cat more often ;)
Bake tofu sheets in oven, then you get lovely protein crispy chips.
The noodles is fine but the texture is what get me