Cumin tofu stir-fry from To Asia, With Love: Everyday Asian Recipes and Stories from the Heart (page 147) by Hetty Lui McKinnon

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Always check the publication for a full list of ingredients. An Eat Your Books index lists the main ingredients and does not include 'store-cupboard ingredients' (salt, pepper, oil, flour, etc.) - unless called for in significant quantity.

Notes about this recipe

  • Eat Your Books

    Can substitute soy sauce for tamari; cornflour for potato starch; chilli flakes or Sichuan chilli flakes for gochugaru; mushrooms, broccoli, or eggplants for cauliflower; and dry sherry or mirin for Shaoxing rice wine.

  • rouge8 on November 05, 2025

    Tastes exactly like a cumin lamb dish, but the texture is very different. Really interesting recipe!

  • eatdrinkstagger on September 07, 2022

    can marinate tofu on a platter so all pieces are evenly coated

  • Rutikazooty on April 28, 2022

    First recipe made from this book. Took me about 1-1/2 hours to make. Subbed cauliflower with farmers market black pearl mushrooms and some broccoli florets. Used half the gochugaru because some of family has low spice tolerance. I fried the spice mixture a little longer since she has you adding it at the very end and, really, Indian spices need to have that time in the oil and heat. Like other reviewers, we found the resulting recipe flavorful but very very dry. Too dry to repeat -- although I ate up my portion. I've made a similar dish with lamb (and Szechuan peppercorns) which is also dry-ish but the lamb does indeed have the fatty unctuousness (thanks to reviewer Apollonia for giving me the words to use to describe this) that the recipe needs. Still can't wait to cook more from the book. And if anyone has suggestions for what to add to the final recipe to mitigate the dry-thing, please comment in the notes for this recipe! I want to learn how to do that.

  • Apollonia on January 21, 2022

    This was not our favorite dish from this book. It's been a long time since I ate meat, but I have had my share of xi'an cumin meat dishes before going vegetarian and part of why they work is the unctuousness of the meat with the dry spice. Tofu, which I will normally inhale in any preparation, just didn't cut it here. My cauliflower also took substantially longer to cook.

  • jenburkholder on September 27, 2021

    I thought this was super meh - too dry, and very one-dimensional. A bit of Sichuan peppercorn and rice vinegar perked it up. I was also reminded of why I don't coat tofu when frying, as the coating just sticks and peels off; it would be better without.

  • Lepa on May 11, 2021

    We really liked this dish but my husband and son weren't fans of the texture of the tofu because it got gloopy from the potato starch. I might just fry the tofu without it next time. Like the other poster I found that it took a bit longer because cauliflower takes a long time to cook on the stove top. I just used 1 teaspoon of gochugaru so the final dish wouldn't be too spicy for the kids and sprinkled extra on the adult portions. We also ate this with a gojuchang dipping sauce (Mother in Law brand tangy dipping sauce) on the side, which was an excellent flavor combination and added a bit of extra spice. We will definitely repeat this, as it's so unusual and good.

  • Astrid5555 on May 08, 2021

    Like the other reviewer I was also sceptical about the raw cumin spice mix going in at the end, but this really made the dish. While we adults really liked this, the kids asked not to repeat it, what a pity!

  • cdglamontagne on April 19, 2021

    Loved this, though it took longer to make overall than the recipe suggests. I was skeptical of the raw cumin mixture at the end but it was amazing. Will make again.

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