Are you bored with ordinary stir fried vegetables with rice? Then try this Japanese style stir fried veggies with tofu puffs today! The dish has taste of Japan as it’s seasoned with teriyaki style sauce with kombu stock added to it. The yummy flavour of the tofu puffs enhances the entire dish. If you never tried cooking with tofu puffs, I highly recommend you to give it a go☺
Tofu puffs
Some of you might have seen tofu puffs sold in Asian supermarket and wondered how to cook them. They are basically tofu but pre-deep fried so you can just cook them just like when you cook tofu. They are nice in stir fried vegetables, noodles, curry and much more! They are also delicious lightly cooked with some oil and soy sauce on their own☺ If you can’t find the tofu puffs anywhere in your area, go on Google and try online shops! If you still have no luck finding them, you could use firm tofu in place of the tofu puffs but the result may be different in flavour.
Kombu (Japanese Seaweed)
I used kombu seaweed to make the kombu stock for the sauce. It’s essential for this recipe so I advise not to omit, though if you have dry shitake you could use it as a replacement. Kombu can be found in Asian supermarket (I get mine from a Chinese shop in my local area). Again, if you can’t find it try online shops☺
Rice
I used Japanese rice to serve the stir fried veggies and I recommend it to anyone who wants to try this recipe. However, you could opt for different types of rice if you prefer!
Finally I want to say..
It takes little longer to prepare the Japanese style stir fried veggies with tofu puffs than ordinary kind of stir fried veggie dish (it doesn’t take hours though..) but it’s totally worth it!
Japanese Style Stir Fried Veggies with Tofu Puffs
Ingredients
- 300 g dry Japanese rice you can use other types of rice if the Japanese rice is not available
For the Kombu stock
- a small handful of dry kombu or 1 sheet of dry kombu broken into pieces
- 480 ml hot water
For the teriyaki tofu puffs
- 1 pack tofu puffs mine had 230g in the pack
- corn starch to coat the puffs
- 2 tbsp soy sauce
- 1 tbsp mirin
- 1 tsp sugar
Vegetables
- 3 cloves garlic minced
- 1 large onion or use 2 small ones
- 1/2 medium broccoli chopped
- 6 medium mushrooms sliced
- 1 medium carrot cut into strips
- 2 strips spring onion chopped finely
For the Japanese sauce
- the kombu stock from above
- 3-4 tbsp soy sauce
- 1 tbsp mirin
- 1 tbsp corn starch
- salt and black pepper to taste
Instructions
- Start cooking the rice according to the instructions on the package.
To make the kombu stock
- In a bowl, place the dry kombu and hot water and let it sit until you need it later.
To make the teriyaki tofu puffs
- Mix the soy sauce, mirin and sugar together in a bowl to make the teriyaki sauce and set aside. Coat the tofu puffs with the corn starch on a plate.
- Heat about 1 tbsp oil on a wok or a frying pan. On a medium heat, cook the tofu puffs until golden crispy. Try cook all around the surface.
- Pour the teriyaki sauce over the tofu puffs and stir to coat. Turn off the heat and transfer the tofu puffs to a plate, set aside.
Cooking the vegetables
- Heat about 1tbsp of oil in a wok or frying pan and cook the garlic for a few seconds until fragrant. Add in the onion and cook until slightly transparent.
- Add in the rest of the vegetables except the spring onion and continue cooking on a medium heat for about 5 minutes. Turn down the heat to the lowest while you are making the Japanese sauce, it will only take a couple of minutes!
To make the Japanese sauce
- Take the kombu out of the bowl of kombu stock that you prepared earlier. Chop the kombu into small pieces and put it in the vegetables in the wok. If you have a lot of kombu, you don't need to put all of it, just enough to mix in with other stuff nicely.
- To the bowl of kombu stock that you prepared earlier, add the soy sauce, mirin, corn starch and mix well.
To get everything together
- Pour the Japanese sauce into the vegetables in the wok and bring the heat up a little. Keep stirring until the sauce start thickening. Turn the heat to the lowest and let it simmer for a few minutes until the carrot and broccoli are soft enough to serve.
- Put in the teriyaki tofu puffs and give it a stir. Add in the spring onion.
- Put a portion of the cooked rice on a plate and top with the fried vegetables with tofu puffs. Sprinkle the top with some spring onion (optional).