Hey Hive!
We're back with more of our home cooking! If you're unfamiliar with this series, it's where I showcase some new recipes I've been trying at home since I've been cooking a lot nowadays! Both because it's cheaper and also healthier to cook for yourself compared to eating out. While I have some regular recipes I do like to try new things and figured I'd share the new ones I've tried.
A few months back, I was shopping for more mapo tofu sauces when I saw the brand that we like also sold this mapo eggplant sauce. This was back during my eggplant era and I discovered how healthy and affordable they were, so I wanted to try out different eggplant recipes.
The sauce pack also had instructions on the back with recommended ingredients. Here it is after translating:
Here are the ingredients I used:
- 3 cups of rice
- 2 carrots
- shiitake mushrooms
- 0.5 eggplant
- 0.5 cup broccoli florets
- 1 pack of mapo eggplant sauce
- 250g frozen minced pork
Step 1: Defrost the minced pork and wash the rice.
I let the rice cooker handle the rice while I prepared the main dish.
Step 2: Prepare the veggies. I sliced the carrots and eggplant julienne, while separating the broccoli florets and cutting up the mushrooms.
Step 3: In a wok, heat up 2 tablespoons of oil then stir fry the eggplant. Once browned, set them aside.
Step 4: Add in the mushrooms, carrots and broccoli and stir fry until soft then set it aside.
I would recommend steaming the broccoli and carrots first before stir frying if not it might take some time. Microwaving them in a bowl with some water would help.
Step 5: Stir fry the minced pork for 3 minutes or so, until the meat changes colour.
Break up the meat with a spatula to cook it evenly.
Step 6: Dump the veggies in with the meat and stir fry with the sauce for a minute or so.
Sorry for the blur photo.
After that you're done and ready to serve! Honestly there wasn't much sauce and I think I had too much ingredients that you couldn't really tell but it's well incorporated.
I made rice with some veggies to go with this dish so we ladled the meat on top.
It looked and smelled really good! I didn't really smell a strong mapo taste like the tofu dishes and sauces I've made though, so I was a little confused why they would call it mapo eggplant.
Honestly it didn't really taste like mapo at all. There might have been a little bit of spice but not much. The sauce seemed to be made of mostly oyster sauce. It was still delicious, but nothing too special. But this did inspire me to try a stir fry with these particular ingredients though. I don't think I've tried this combination before and I'm glad to know it's good!
Overall, the dish was still yummy, but I don't think I will buy this sauce again. I've seen enough recipe videos to know how to make a decent Chinese stir fry sauce with similar ingredients. Maybe next time I'll just make it myself.
Thanks for reading!
To find out more about me, check out my intro post here!
