This recipe is inspired as a copycat from the Cactus Club! I love that this recipe is so tasty that you literally forget it’s vegetarian and extremely easy to make substitutes to also make vegan!
Why You’ll Love This Crispy Tofu Bowl Recipe
The only real cooking involved in this recipe is cooking the tofu which is super easy!
If you love a minimal effort type of dish, this is the one for you.
How To Make This Crispy Tofu Bowl Recipe
The Crispy Tofu Bowl consists of a few different components, most of which takes less than 15 mins to put together.
This is the order that
- Cook the rice as per instructions.
- While the rice is cooking, prep the veggies, including defrosting anything you are using from frozen. I used frozen mango and edamame beans. I also did a quick pickle on my own ginger, but you can feel free to buy premade, I just couldn’t find any in a small portion because I don’t eat it often and didn’t want another condiment in my fridge.
- Prep and cook the tofu. It’s important to really dry out the tofu. You can use firm or medium firm tofu. I like medium firm tofu because I like the crunchy outside and soft inside, but you do have to be very gentle with moving it around because it breaks much easier than firm tofu.
- While the tofu is cooking on the stovetop, prep the 2 sauces. This dish consists of the spicy and. sweet sauce for the tofu and and ponzu mirin sauce as the dressing.
- Once the tofu is done, remove the excess oil and cover it in the spicy sauce.
- Then assemble the veggies, rice, and all the toppings
How To Serve This Crispy Tofu Bowl Recipe
I love how creative you can be with this presentation!
The Cactus Club serves it in a bowl, but I like dishes that are a cross between a bowl and plate because I love highlighting the rice and showing off all the ingredients that I didn’t want to hide it underneath the crispy tofu. However, there’s so much you can do with it!
I also do recommend all of the ingredients (although radish sprouts can be so hard to find and it’s super easy to substitute with cilantro or microgreens), but you can omit anything you don’t like to eat. I did like the flavour combination and think this would also be an easy dish to serve a lot of people because people could just pick what they like and customize their own bowl!
I love entertaining and I think this would be a really great dish to serve if you have a combo of friends with different dietary needs.
Crispy Tofu Bowl Tips
- I used to think that potato starch would make this crispy (and I said it in my TikTok video), but corn starch is better!
- The Cactus Club uses purple radish sprouts so if you can find that, it would bring some extra colour! I couldn’t and only had green radish sprouts leftover from my Tuna Stack recipe.
- Cactus Club also uses a Napa Cabbage and Iceberg Lettuce blend. I just used iceberg lettuce but if you have both, that would be great!
The Crispy Tofu Bowl Recipe
Ingredients
***This makes 2 Servings. Add 1/2 of each ingredient for each bowl. The sauces are for 2 bowls as well****
Base
1 Cup of Jasmine Rice (Seasoned with 1 Tsp Rice Vinegar and Sprinkle Sugar)
1/2 Cup of Iceberg Lettuce and Napa Cabbage Blend Roughly Sliced (Only Iceberg is fine)
Toppings
1 Ripe Avocado Diced
2 Tbsp Diced Mango (Fresh or thawed from frozen)
2 Tbsp Edamame Beans
3 Small Radishes
2 Green Onions
1/2 Sliced Cucumber
Garnishes (Optional)
Pickled Ginger
Radish Sprouts
Black Sesame Seeds for Rice
Fried Tofu
300g Firm or Medium Tofu
1/3 Cup Corn Starch
1/2 Tsp Salt
1/4 Cup of Canola (or neutral oil) for Frying
Soy Chili Sauce (used to coat the tofu)
1Tbsp Soy Sauce
2 Tbsp Gogujang (or Garlic Chilli Sauce)
4 Tbsp Rice Vinegar
2 Tbsp Honey
4 Tsp Sesame Oil
2 Tbsp Mirin
Ponzu Mirin Sauce (used as the dressing)
1Tsp Bonito Soup Stock (or Flakes)
1/2 Cup of Warm Water
2 Tsp Soy Sauce
1/2 Tbsp Mirin
1 Tbsp Rice Vinegar
1/2 Tsp Lime Juice
1/4 Tsp Orange Juice
Instructions
- Cook the rice as per instructions.
- Prepare the veggies by dicing the avocado, thawing any frozen ingredients such as mango or edamame beans) and slicing cucumbers, radishes and green onions.
- If you do not have pickled ginger but would like to add it. thinly slice 1 inch of ginger and place on stove top on a medium boil with 1/4 cup of water, 1/4 cup of rice vinegar while all other items are cooking (max 30 mins).
- Prepare the tofu by drying it well with a paper towel to extract as much liquid as possible without breaking it and bring a frying pan with canola oil to med high heat.
- Cut into 1 inch cubes and coat with potato starch or corn starch. Add one cube into the frying pan to ensure the oil is hot enough. If the oil starts to bubble around the tofu, it is hot enough.
- Add the rest of the tofu and stir occasionally to ensure the tofu does not burn or stick together.
- Prepare all the ingredients for the Soy Chilli Sauce.
- Once the tofu is done, place them on a paper to drain out the excess oil and then add it to the Soy Chilli Sauce.
- In another bowl, add all the ingredients for the Ponzu Mirin sauce and set it aside to dress the bowl once it has been plated.
- Assemble the bowl by placing rice at the bottom of the plate bowl, and add all the toppings, crispy tofu, and dressing. Serve immediately and enjoy!
What type of rice do you recommend for this recipe?
I would suggest Jasmine rice because that is what Cactus Club uses, but other types work too!
Do you use the ponzu mirin sauce as the dressing?
Yes it’s the dressing – I’ve clarified it in the recipe, thank you!
Omg you are a genius this tasted exactly like the one i had at cactus club and tbh was even better! The sauce for the tofu was soooooooo good. For the dressing I made it vegan by boiling dry kelp and shitakke mushrooms instead of the Bonito soup stock/flakes and water. It was delicious 10/10
I’m so glad it worked out and I’m so happy that you could make a vegan version of it as well, thank you so much for letting me know!! It made my day <3
You’ve really nailed it! Question – where you do use the other sauce. The first one you used to coat the fried tofu, but what about the other one?
I use the second sauce (the ponzu mirin) as the dressing. I have clarified it in the recipe. Thanks so much for trying! 🙂
Dethawing?
Thanks for the letting me know! The typo has been corrected to defrosting.