Chef, food writer, and Studio ATAO founder Jenny Dorsey chops, sears, and sizzles her way through this barley tofu with chili oil recipe.
On Play Me a Recipe, your favorite cooks will walk you through their most treasured recipes, offering all the insider tips, stories, and tricks you won't get from a written recipe—and you'll be right alongside them, every step of the way. Feel free to pause, jump back, or navigate the steps via the podcast chapters.
If you're cooking along, here's the recipe we're making today. Go ahead and grab the ingredients below (Jenny starts listing them at 3:02) before starting the episode.
Barley Tofu
Serves 2
Barley "tofu"
Chili oil
Barley "tofu"
Chili oil
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Jenny Dorsey: So just peel your garlic cloves and grate them, and they'll come out like they would like a garlic press.
Jenny: Hi everyone, this is Play Me a Recipe. I'm Jenny Dorsey, professional chef, writer, and the founder of a nonprofit community think tank called Studio ATAO. Today, I'm coming to you from my kitchen in Los Angeles. We'll be making a barley tofu recipe alongside some chili oil, which is linked in the show notes and on Food52.com. We'll be gathering ingredients, whisking together our barley tofu base, cooking it, letting it set, cutting it into little cubes, pan frying it, and getting everything together for our chili oil, our aromatics, grinding our spices, pouring that hot oil on top, and finally doing a taste test. Please feel free to pause or jump back using the podcast chapters if you need a little bit more time.
I call this barley "tofu" with the tofu in air quotes because it visually kind of resembles tofu, but it is very different. It's not made with soy, it's made with barley flour, and in a very similar way to Shan tofu or Burmese tofu, which is made with chickpea flour. It's also kind of similar to Korean acorn jelly, which is made with acorn flour. This recipe is a result of some experimenting with Shan tofu and thinking, "Hmm, I think barley flour might do the same thing," since at the time I had a lot of barley flour in my house, as I was writing a recipe book for Avatar: The Last Airbender. And there are some Tibetan recipes in there, so I thought, "Why don't I try it out, see if it congeals in the same way," and lo and behold it did, which was really exciting. This is a very different texture. It's a little bit more I think like polenta, and once you pan fry it, you still get that nice crispy outside and that soft inside that kind of reminds me of turnip cake, if you've had that in Cantonese dim sum. So all around this is a really versatile recipe. I'm making just a plain version today, but you can definitely add lots of flavorings, you can play around with it and see what you like. It can be savory, it could be sweet. I've never made it sweet but it could be. So, it is definitely a canvas that you can paint with.
The base of this chili oil is inspired by the sauce that you usually have with Hainanese chicken and rice. So there's some ginger, there's some garlic, there's some scallion with hot oil poured over. But I've also incorporated some chilies, notably some Sichuan peppercorn as well for that nice little tingle. You're also very welcome to adjust this to your preferred spice level, as well as salt level, sweetness level, all of it.
Jenny: To start, we're just going to gather everything for our barley tofu. So first you need 3/4 of a cup of barley flour, or 100g. I always recommend weighing things out because A, it saves dishes, but also it's just more precise. You'll also need one and three quarters cup water that's just plain water room temperature, or 375g. One teaspoon kosher salt, which is a very, like, minimal amount. You can definitely adjust that up, but people have different salt preferences, so I try to err on the side of minimal when possible. And some neutral oil for the frying later on. But you don't need that quite yet.
Jenny: You're going to gather together a small bowl and you're going to put in your barley flour as well as your water and salt. Alternatively, if you're trying to save dishes, you can do this directly in, like, a medium sized pot. Alright, with your flour and water in your pot or bowl, you're gonna start whisking it together and make sure that you remove any clumps, so you want to make sure this is nice and smooth. Depending on what kind of texture you're looking for in the center of this, you can get like, super super super fine barley flour for, like, a smoother texture. But I have some here that has a little bit of coarseness, and as I kind of said, I like it. Kind of reminds me of polenta, has a little bit of texture for the sauce, chili oil or a different sauce, to kind of cling onto.
So once this is smooth, we're just gonna take our pot and get it over some medium heat. Alright, I'm at the stove. We're just gonna take this and cook it at a medium heat. And this is the only part that takes a while on this recipe. You need to make sure to cook this until that floury taste of the flour is cooked out, and it's going to take like 10 minutes, which seems like a really long time because you'll see, it'll thicken pretty quickly and it'll look cooked. Like it'll be thick, it'll be pulling away from the sides of the pot, which is what you want. But it's probably not totally there yet until you've hit that 10 minute mark. I've done so many versions of this where I'm like, "Oh, I think it's good," and what happens is, if you don't cook it long enough, it won't set properly, so later when you're trying to cut it in cute little cubes for pan frying, it's just like, sticky. Like, it's always gonna be sticky, but it's like, really not totally cooked through, so you just want to make sure that in order to get your cute little cubes later on, you are fully cooking and hydrating your flour, and it will be a lot easier to work with.
Jenny: Oh nice. It's starting to thicken, so I'm reducing the heat just a touch, to like a medium low, and I'm gonna continue to whisk and cook it. And as you see, the longer you cook it the less wet it looks. That water is evaporating, and soon, towards the end, you'll see it kind of like, pulling away from the sides of the pot, so it looks less like a porridge and more like...uh, hmm, how would I describe it? More like a wet dough and less like a porridge. Yeah, I think that sounds good.
Alright, so this looks nice and thick basically. When you scrape it from the bottom of the pan you'll see that it leaves clean tracks, and it is ready to be transferred. I like to put these in little brownie pans or little loaf pans that are non stick. And that way you can kind of mold them against the wall so they have a nice crisp side. And if you press upon them then you can get that nice flat edge. So I have two little mini loaf pans here that I'm going to nest into each other so that it can achieve that nice flat top and later, cut into little cubes.
Alright, so I am transferring the mixture while it's still nice and hot into these little loaf pans, and you'll see that they shouldn't stick to the loaf pans. So that you can kind of roughly allocate half and half. It's important that you soak your pot right away because you want to have a relatively easy cleanup later. Otherwise it kind of gets stuck and it's not fun. I've left things in the pot for a while to go do something else and it was a pain to clean up. So make sure you get hot water and soap in your pan ASAP. Now that I have all my mixture across two mini loaf pans, I'm gonna put some cling wrap right on top and I'm gonna nest them into each other so I can flatten them, get that nice clean solid edge on both sides as well as the top. Alright. So now that barley tofu just needs to set for a few hours. So I'm gonna go wash up and get reset for our chili oil.
Jenny: And we're back. This is Play Me A Recipe. I'm Jenny Dorsey and today we're making barley tofu and chili oil. We just finished up the barley tofu, first portion of the recipe, and now we're moving on to prepping for the chili oil.
Jenny: So for the chili oil, you're gonna first need eight dried red chili peppers. I'm using Erjingtiao chilies from Fly By Jing. These are imported from Sichuan. As well as their red sichuan peppercorn, which is also super, super fragrant and really, really tingly. You need about a tablespoon of that. I'll also be using two teaspoons of whole white peppercorn. Important to note that the white peppercorn that you're buying from Asian grocery stores is different from the kind you're buying from Western grocery stores, because the former is aged for about 2-3 weeks longer, or fermented. So it gets a very funky, distinctive aroma and taste that you otherwise would not be able to get in this yummy chili oil. You'll also need about two inches of a little nub of ginger. You're gonna peel that, we're gonna mince that, as well as three stalks of scallion, which we're also similarly gonna peel, mince, as well as some garlic. About five cloves, also minced. We're going to use one cup of neutral oil. I'm just using canola oil. You can also use like an avocado or a grapeseed or rapeseed. You don't want to use something like olive oil because it has such a strong flavor. You really want the aromatics and spices to carry through, and oil kind of just to be the medium in which you're consuming all of those other yummy things. You'll also need some salt, white sugar, and white vinegar to taste, and you can kind of blend that together at the end and adjust it, depending on your own personal preferences.
Jenny: Alright, so first things first, let's cut everything and get it nice and minced. Since this final chili oil you're going to eat, you're gonna actually eat the little pieces in it, you really want to make sure that these are finally minced. Otherwise, you know, if you were gonna cook them down further, if you were gonna purée them, you could do a rough chop. But here, you're literally going to eat these pieces as they are. So you want to make sure they get a really nice mince, so that you're not getting, like, a big old chunk of ginger or scallion or garlic, because that is not very appetizing.
For me personally, I absolutely hate mincing garlic because it gets really sticky. And so what I recommend for applications like this is you can actually grate garlic with a micro plane. So just peel your garlic cloves and grate them, and they'll come out like they would like a garlic press, except that you did it through a tool that you probably already own. So you don't need to get a one-use tool like a garlic press, since I don't really recommend buying one-use tools in the kitchen. (chopping sounds) Alright. Now that I'm done cutting everything, I'm going to transfer everything into a hot oil-safe bowl. So a glass bowl or a ceramic bowl is best. To be honest, I often do this in a plastic cambro and last time I did this on the video out of a plastic cambro, everyone totally wigged out. So now I'm like, ok, make sure to use glass, but I'll be real, sometimes I use a plastic cambro which is not totally safe. So don't do it. Don't recommend. Anyway, now that we have everything in a nice hot oil-safe container, you can use a bench scraper to get everything. Highly recommend buying a bench scraper for your kitchen.
Jenn: We're going to grind up our spices. Alright, now let's get our spices ready. Gonna get some red Sichuan peppercorns in here as well as some white peppercorns. And we're just gonna grind this until it's pretty fine. (grinding sound) Take a nice whiff. Oh, smells so good. Alright, now you're just gonna pour that into your mixture with all the scallions, garlic, and ginger. Alright, let's also toast our chilies. So you're gonna put some chilies on a half sheet, quarter sheet, full sheet I guess, if you have to, and put them in the oven at 400° Fahrenheit. You toast them for about a minute or two. You want to be really careful because they will burn really fast and if you're using nice chilis, that's just a pity. And I burn so many chilies so I don't want that to happen to you. So keep an eye on them. Now that our chilies are ready, we're going to take them out, let them cool for a few minutes. And we're also gonna grind these.
Jenny: Alright, so now all that's left is to heat up your oil. As I mentioned, I'm using just a neutral canola oil today, and you'll need one cup. I'm using an infrared thermometer so that I can measure my oil. And I highly recommend that you get something like this too, because honestly, the little, like, temperature probes, um, or the little like, candy thermometers, they're just kind of hard and unwieldy. The infrared is so useful because it's clean. You don't have to touch anything, it's immediate. Of course this is not gonna be useful if you're temping meat, because it only gets surface temperature. But for things like oil, or if you're trying to temp, like, a mousse or something like that, super, super useful.
Jenny: So this takes a few minutes. You want to get it to at least 300° Fahrenheit and anywhere from 300 to 350, depending on how cooked you want your aromatics. If you want, you know, your ginger and garlic to be really, really cooked, you probably want to get it to like at least 350. If you want a little bit of that bite of the ginger and the garlic, I usually am somewhere around the 325 range, but you can definitely play with this depending on personal preference. At this step, I also like to add some salt and sugar to my mix because salt and sugar are actually not dissolvable, they're not soluble in oil. So I'd like to think that if you kind of add it at this stage, right to your aromatics, as the hot oil touches aromatics, that steam helps melt the salt and sugar. I don't know if that's scientifically accurate, but I've been doing it and it seems to work. I then later add the white vinegar separately.
Alright, so our oil is ready. I have it at about 340. So I'm going to come in and get nice and toasty with our aromatics and our spice mix. (steaming sound) This will steam up a lot, so make sure you're using a bowl that's big enough for all your aromatics, and you are not putting your face directly on top, because then you'll get a lot of steam in your face. Make sure to let that cook for a little while. It's gonna be really hot right now, stir it up a little bit and then once it's a little bit cooler and you can taste it, you can add your vinegar as well as some more salt and sugar or fish sauce if you want it, and season it to taste.
Jenny: Alright, so now that we have finished our chili oil and our barley tofu has had some time to set, we can invert that and slice it into our preferred size, whether that's you cube it or cut into long strips, these are whatever you would like. I like to cube 'em so it looks kind of like little pan fried pieces of tofu. You can also get them a little bit larger if you want them to look more like turnip cakes, but this is totally up to you.
So I'm going to cut them into little pieces of cubes today, and if you notice that it is sticking to your knife a little bit, don't worry. Just get a damp paper towel and you can kind of wipe off your knife in between cuts. If you notice that this is really, really loose, like you can't even cut shapes out of it, unfortunately, this means you probably didn't cook it enough the first time on the stove, so you will have to transfer it back to the stove and cook it some more and then you can reset the entire thing. I know that's frustrating, so just make sure you are cooking it thoroughly the first time around.
Now that I have this cut up, I am going to heat up a nonstick pan with some neutral oil and do a pan fry. Alright, let's get our oil hot. And again, I'm using a neutral oil like canola, or you can use soybean, rapeseed, or vegetable oil. You don't want to use something like olive oil because it has such a strong taste. Um, and you want to make sure that you are using an oil that has a high smoking point. So you want to make sure that the oil's nice and hot before you drop in your little pieces of barley tofu. The idea here is to get a nice golden brown, crunchy exterior but still have that kind of soft interior, soft polenta-like interior. This is a little tricky sometimes, because once the outside sets it tends to slide around so you just have to be careful while moving this. So I recommend using a pair of small tongs, like little plastic tongs, not metal ones. Or you could use chopsticks, or you could use like a small silicone spatula to gently toss them around, so you can brown everything on every edge. You could hypothetically also deep fry these, I just don't like to deep fry things at my house because A, it kind of tends to set off my smoke detector, but B, it's just so much oil. But you can definitely deep fry as well.
Alright, my oil's nice and hot, so let me start dropping these in. (sizzling sounds) Yeah. Remember to not overcrowd your pan. I know it's so tempting to squeeze all the tofus in there, but make sure that you're not overcrowding the pan. This is really important because you don't want to drop the temperature of the oil too much, because then it would take much longer to get that nice crispy exterior you're looking for, and it tends to overcook things. This goes for everything, not just cooking barley tofu but for all things. You don't wanna overcrowd the pan when you're cooking meat or vegetables or anything. You just don't want to put too much onto a small surface area and dramatically reduce the temperature of that surface area, because you won't get an even cook, and you also won't get the--the time of your cooking will be off.
Alright. This is looking pretty good on one side, so I'm gonna do a flip. It shouldn't splatter too much. But if it's splattering a little bit, you can definitely use a little splatter shield or you can just move things at an arms length away to be safe in the kitchen. Alright, this is looking pretty good. So I am going to remove our tofu from the pan, get it onto a plate. You can drain on some paper towels if you'd like to do that step. And I'm gonna get my chili oil and do a nice drizzle before we do our taste test.
Okay, I have tofu, just drizzled my chili oil on top, it looks so good. Nice and golden brown and crispy and gleaming in the light. I've got some afternoon sun, so I am out on my little patio just enjoying the breeze, the sunlight, because it's always sunny in Los Angeles, and this delightful barley tofu. So let's take a bite. Mmm. So great. A little bit of a crunch on the outside. But then you get that nice soft plushy interior. The chili oil is super tingly. Mmm. It's got a little bit of that ginger kick, that undernote of the scallion, and the garlic, which has been cooked nicely. So you get kind of a little bit of a roasted flavor, but it's pretty spicy from those peppers. It's kind of tempered out and funky with the white pepper. It's great. You can eat a lot of this. You can also spruce this up if you want to add, like, some ground pork or ground beef and make it almost into a meal. You and top it with some pickled veg. Like, this could easily become a one dish meal, quick lunch, or something like that.
Jenny: So how'd yours turn out? Is your tofu nice and crispy on the outside? Soft on the inside? Is your chili oil nice and numbing? Is it savory and complex? I want to hear all about it. Tell me how it all went by leaving a review. Thanks so much for joining me today on Play Me A Recipe. The recipe is linked in the show notes and on Food52.com, and you can find me online everywhere at @ChefJennyDorsey. Happy cooking. See you next time.