I know it sounds simple, and you’re probably wondering how it could possibly be as good as I describe. Still, a great Agedashi Tofu is like a perfect warm custard, melting on your tongue into a creamy pool of savory dashi, lightly accented by the garnishes. The magic is in the way the coating absorbs the flavorful dashi, which seasons the tofu while also releasing some residual oil into the broth, imparting a hint of richness without being greasy.
How to Make Agedashi Tofu
Although it’s simple to prepare, it’s also easy to get wrong, and I’ve seen too many versions of this dish in Japanese restaurants that are just plain awful. Agedashi Tofu should not be a tasteless pile of gummy mush, drowning in an insipid broth. Nor should it be a soggy battered grease bomb that tastes like stale donuts. It most certainly shouldn’t be a tough, crispy sponge, smothered in a cloyingly sweet teriyaki sauce. If any of this sounds familiar, keep reading, and I’ll tell you how to make my amazing Agedashi Tofu recipe at home. Like any simple dish, the most important thing is the quality of the ingredients. To prepare the tofu, I like to salt every surface of the tofu and let it sit while I prepare the other ingredients. This does two things. The first is that it helps rid the tofu of extra water through osmosis; this not only helps the starch coating crisp, it also prevents the tofu from splattering excessively when you fry it. The second benefit of salting the tofu is that it lightly seasons the tofu, which allows you to make the dashi less salty, so that you can enjoy it as a soup along with the tofu. Once the excess moisture has come out, you can pat the tofu dry with paper towels, and give each cube a light even coating of potato starch before frying them. When deep-frying the tofu, it’s essential to use fresh oil. Agedashi Tofu is not the kind of dish to make with oil that you want to get one last fry out of before you toss it out. It has a very delicate flavor profile, and if you use old oil, it will end up greasy, and taste like all the things that have been fried in the oil before it. The temperature of the oil should also be relatively high. This ensures that the coating fries up crisp, without frying the tofu itself (which would give it a spongy texture), and without absorbing excess oil. Finally, when serving the Agedashi Tofu, I like to fill the bowl with just enough dashi so it comes up about two-thirds of the way up the sides of the tofu. This allows the top to stay crisp, and you can choose whether you want to soak it in the dashi or not as you eat it.
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📖 Recipe
