Kkanpoong tofu by the Korean Vegan
Video with a story (This will make your heart swell with all the feelings.)
Publication date: July 2020
Summary: Crunchy tofu recipe with spicy sauce
No content warnings apply.
I have been following the food blogger The Korean Vegan for a while on Instagram. She veganizes Korean food and shares the recipes along with beautiful photographs of her food. She taught me that it is not difficult to veganize Korean food, and you still can honor and celebrate your culture while still holding up the values (in my case, not harming animals for my consumption) that are important to you.
She has recently been gaining popularity on Tiktok, where she merges food videography with poignant personal stories. I admire how open-hearted she is. I often think about the power of vulnerability (Brené Brown) when I watch her content. Her videos will make you cry, but at the same time, hungry. You can read more about how “her 60-second recipes will make you less racist” in this article.
This week, I tried one of her most popular videos: kkanpoong tofu. (It is spelled kkaMpoong in the recipe but the ㄴ in 깐풍 should be transliterated to N.) If you already have the basic ingredients such as soy sauce, chili pepper powder, flour, and sweetener, this recipe doesn’t require many ingredients and it is very affordable. The only additional items that I had to purchase were a block of tofu ($2), scallions ($1), peppers ($0.50), and carrots ($1). And I only used a portion of scallions and carrots, so it only cost me ~$3.50. Vegan dishes are not expensive to make, contrary to the common misconception. Vegan cheese, vegan meat, etc. can be very expensive, but I only rarely purchase them to satiate my occasional craving. Most of the time, I use ingredients such as beans, lentils, tofu, fresh produce in season, etc which are budget-friendly.
I used a shallot instead of red onion, serrano peppers instead of Korean green chili peppers, and Korean Pancake Mix (which is basically seasoned wheat flour) instead of potato starch. As she mentions, you can use regular flour if you are okay with gluten and don’t have potato starch. I didn’t use mirin or dried chili. I used maple syrup as the recipe calls for, but usually Korean recipes use 올리고당 or 물엿.
The key to this recipe is to get as much water out of tofu as you can, so that it will be crispy. She uses a tofu press, which I don’t have. But a nice trick is, you can microwave tofu for 2-3 min. Then you let it strain while you prepare the vegetables. This will help you get the water out of tofu in a short time without much hassle.
I often complain about how it takes me double, triple the time to finish cooking than the recipe says. But this one truly was fairly simple and quick; it took me about 30 minutes. (The most time-consuming part is frying the tofu cubes.)
And the dish was amazing. The recipe deserves all the hype it’s been getting. The sauce is a perfect combination of spicy and sweet. It was worth standing in front of the stove and tending each and every cube to make sure they were all cooked through, because the tofu cubes turned out very crunchy. If you are looking for an affordable, plant-based Korean food with rich flavors, I would highly recommend this recipe.
I ate them with rice and sparkling water. Since it is cooked in a good amount of oil, I recommend a carbonated drink to go with it. I can also see them as a wonderful late-night snack with a glass of beer. Even with chili powder and serrano peppers, it was not as spicy as I’d hoped, so next time I’ll throw in some Thai chili peppers.
(Icon by Kaylen Yul Lee from the Noun Project)
