This teriyaki tofu stir fry is an easy weeknight meal to whip up and the whole family will enjoy it! This is a one-pan dish that can easily be served over rice. Add in fried tofu and as many veggies as you’d like!
If your family is new to eating meatless meals, this is a great starter recipe to introduce them to vegan food. The sweet and savory teriyaki sauce coats the tofu in a way that you don’t even realize you’re missing the meat!
What is a Stir Fry
A stir fry is a mixture that is fried quickly over high heat while being stirred constantly. Usually a wok is used for Asian dishes such as a teriyaki stir fry, but a large nonstick pan will work just fine for this recipe.
For this recipe, I used a large frying pan (the biggest pan I own actually) to make this recipe. You can use whatever you have.
How to Make a Stir Fry
Since a stir fry is generally a protein cooked in a bit of oil with veggies and then with a sauce added, you can make any kind of stir fry. You can either add in cooked noodles at the end of cooking to coat evenly with sauce to warm the noodles through or serve your stir fry over rice.
Stir fries are incredibly customizable. If you see an ingredient here that you don’t like, you can just omit it. If you have other ingredients you are wanting to add, either because you love them in stir fries or because you have leftover veggies in your fridge, go ahead and add them in! Ingredients like broccoli, yakisoba, water chestnuts and even sweet potatoes will also do great in this recipe.
Ingredients
- Tofu: This was the protein of choice for this dish. You can easily replace with chicken or shrimp, but use tofu to keep the dish vegan!
- Shiitake: A staple in Asian cuisine is the Shiitake mushroom. Take off the stems and sautee them whole.
- Baby corn: Harvested when it is young, this corn can be eaten stalk and all. Cut it into small pieces or add it whole to the stir fry.
- Bamboo shoots: A way to add a texture that is not seen very often in Western cooking. Find canned bamboo shoots at your local grocery store.
- Aromatics: Garlic, ginger & green onion all balance the dish. Even though these flavors are in the teriyaki sauce, frying the aromatics with the veggies will really brighten those flavors.
- Teriyaki sauce: Finding the right sauce is crucial when making a teriyaki stir fry. You can buy bottled sauce, such as Soy Vay teriyaki sauce. I like to make my own easy teriyaki sauce so that I know that it’s absolutely perfect, but
How to Prepare Shiitake Mushrooms
Preparing Shiitake mushrooms can be a bit tricky if you’ve never purchased and cooked with them before. There are actually a variety of Shiitake mushrooms, but any kind of Shiitake that you pick up at your local grocery store will do just fine.
While your mushrooms will be relatively clean from the store, it’s still a good idea to clean them thoroughly before throwing them in a pan to be cooked.
Use your thumb and go through each mushroom to wash off dirt, as just rinsing them with water may not be enough to get off all the dirt. The stems will be coming off before they go in the pan but it’s still best to make sure they are clean.
While some stems are edible, the stems on Shiitake mushrooms are not. They are fibrous and tough and you will not be able to chew through them. It’s best to take them off before cookig.
After the mushrooms are washed, carefully take the stems off. You can either take your thumb and forefinger to twist the stem off or you can cut the stem off with a knife.
Once the mushrooms are cleaned and de-stemmed and you are ready to cook, go ahead and throw them into the pan with the tofu and whites of the green onion. Brown the mushrooms on both sides.
Why Tofu?
This dish is a vegan stir fry that uses tofu as the main protein. If you are new to vegan dishes, or even vegetarian dishes, this is a great starting point. When the teriyaki coats the tofu, it gives it a “meaty” taste.
Make sure you use firm or extra-firm tofu for this teriyaki tofu stir fry. It’s also a lot less prep than a meat protein.
After taking the tofu out of it’s container, take a couple of paper towels and press out any excess water. Since you are using firm or extra-firm tofu, there shouldn’t be a lot of extra water to press out. This step will help with the frying process.
You can either dice the tofu and or pan-fry the tofu before adding the ingredients. Either way will work for this stir-fry.
Add in a couple tablespoons of oil, the tofu, mushrooms and the whites of the onion. Let the mushrooms and tofu brown a bit on each side. These ingredients take a bit longer to cook than the others, so it’s best to add them first.
Best Teriyaki Sauce
Deciding what the best teriyaki sauce has definitely caused a couple heated discussions between dinner tables. Some have a particular teriyaki that they absolutely swear by that they buy at the grocery store. Others prefer to make their own sauce.
I like to make my own sauce. Store bought just doesn’t do it for me. Making your own teriyaki sauce is actually quite easy, even though the flavor of it may taste like it has a multitude of ingredients in it. Teriyaki sauce is just soy, a sweetener (I use honey and brown sugar in my recipe) and aromatics such as ginger and garlic. Get the full recipe to make your own here!
Teriyaki Tofu Stir Fry
Course: DinnerCuisine: AsianDifficulty: Easy4
servings10
minutes20
minutes250
kcalIngredients
1 block 1 tofu
1 can 1 of bamboo shoots
1 can 1 of baby corn
3 3 spring onions, whites and greens divided
8 oz 8 shiitake mushrooms, stems removed
1 tsp 1 ginger, minced
1 clove 1 garlic, minced
2 cups 2 sugar snap peas
1 cup 1 teriyaki sauce
4 tbsn 4 sesame oil
Directions
- Add the oil to a large frying pan or wok. Heat over medium-high heat and add the whites of the green onion, tofu and mushrooms. Fry until the mushrooms and tofu are slightly browned.
- Add the garlic, ginger, baby corn and sugar snap peas to the pan and toss. Let fry until the snap peas are tender, about 6 minutes.
- Add the teriyaki sauce and mix well. Let the sauce coat the stir fry and heat through.
- Serve with rice.
