I can’t remember the first time I had stewed potatoes.
It was either at a Korean restaurant where I had gamja jorim or it may have been at some point when I was living in Hong Kong. I’m not sure.
But either way I have some sort of familiarity and comfort associated with this type of dish.
Maybe it’s the method of stewing anything like the Stewed Mushrooms my grandma makes that gives me this positive association with this method of cooking?
Anyways.
This is a quick stew that takes less than 30 minutes to make and minimal prep. The best kind of dish!
Traditionally this sort of recipe would use minced pork but of course this is a vegan newsletter, so that’s not going to work for us!
Instead, we can use soft tofu, which I’ve found generally to work well to replace any sort of mince.
Usually this would be made with white potato, rather than sweet potato, but at the time of writing this I had an abundance of sweet potato at home and thought why not try sweet potato! It turned out great, and I might even like it better than the “original” white potato version. Of course, you’re free to use whatever kind of potato you like.
Stewed Sweet Potato and Tofu Mince
Serves: 4 - 6
Prep time: 10 minutes
Cook time: 20 minutes
Tools:
A frying pan
Ingredients
Potatoes and Tofu “Mince”
2 small sweet potatoes, or 1 large sweet potato, peeled and sliced into 1/4 inch thick slices
300 g soft tofu (1 pack)
1 tbsp sesame oil
ground white pepper (sub for black)
about 1 - 2 tbsp of neutral oil
4 cloves of garlic
Sauce
3 tbsp dark soya sauce
1 tbsp vegetarian oyster sauce
1 1/2 cup water
Method
Heat a frying pan over medium heat.
Cook the tofu: add the tofu to a pan. Add a dash of white pepper (sub for black pepper) and 1 tbsp of sesame oil. Mix together in the pan and let cook for 5-10 minutes until brown. Mix occasionally.
While the tofu is cooking, prepare the remaining ingredients:
Peel sweet potato, slice into 1/4 inch thick slices.
Mince the garlic.
Once the tofu is done cooking, remove it from the pan and put it on a plate or bowl. Set aside.
Add a 1 tbsp or so of oil back to the pan. Make sure it’s on medium high heat. Fry the sweet potato for a few minutes, flipping so that both sides get browned.
Make room in the middle of the pan, and add the garlic. Let it cook for a minute or so.
Add back the tofu, and give everything a stir.
Add 1 1/2 cup water, 3 tbsp dark soya sauce, and 1 tbsp veg oyster sauce to the pan. Bring to a boil, then turn down the heat to a simmer. Cover and simmer for about 8 minutes until the potatoes are soft and the sauce is slightly thickened.
Serve with rice or whatever you like!
Link to printer version.
Make it saucier: The sauce to ingredient ratio outlined above results in a light coating of sauce. If you’d like more sauce, double it!
Add more protein:
You could easily double the amount of soft tofu in this recipe without changing any of the other ingredients.
This would work well with chickpeas - add them in at the same step as the tofu and mash them a bit to make them kind of into a mince.
Of course, any vegan mice would work, like a Beyond Meat sort of thing if that’s what you enjoy.
Add some veg: Try preparing some carrot in the same manner as the sweet potato, i.e., 1/4 inch thick slices, and cook along with the potatoes.
Sweet potato: White potato. Or any kind of potato. Japanese sweet potato is what I used here. Purple sweet potato would be tasty as well. Yams could work too.
White pepper: Ground black pepper.
Soft tofu: Any vegan mince would work. Chickpeas could work too. Any you could use a different kind of tofu — e.g., firm — but I find that soft tofu gives the best mince-like texture when cooked down as in this recipe.
Sesame oil: Feel free to omit, but it does add a nice taste.
Vegetarian oyster sauce: Hoisin sauce. It’ll come out a bit sweeter, and a bit less umami, but would still work
Dark soya sauce: Try using about half the amount of regular soya sauce. In this case, since the recipe calls for 3 tbsp of dark soya sauce, you could use 1 1/2 tbsp of regular soya sauce instead.