Spicy Garlic Eggplant Sauce (2.8 oz - 12 Pack) - Spicy, & Savory Garlic Flavor, Ready-to-Use, Perfect for Stir-Frying, Braising, Drizzling, Steamed Dishes & Marinades

We first found this product on an Asian-foods specialty site, but when they were sold out, we discovered we could get it from Amazon for about the same price if we bought in bulk. And we like this stuff enough to buy it in bulk! It is somewhat spicy, but not overwhelmingly so, and has a nicely balanced sweet-and-sour flavor that goes great with eggplant. I should point out that we've only made it with Japanese / Chinese type eggplant, which is about as long but much skinnier than 'regular' eggplant, about the size of an English cucumber, and a brighter purple rather than nearly black; it's also less bitter than 'regular' eggplant. As the instructions say, you want about 12 oz of eggplant, which is roughly two eggplants if you're able to source the Chinese type. (We use a postal scale to weigh our eggplants so we get as close to 12 oz as possible, but this isn't strictly necessary.) We cut the eggplant in diagonal slices about finger-thickness, then cut those in half to make two stretched-looking half-moons from each slice. From there, we depart from the package instructions. They say to either deep-fry or boil the eggplant, but we just saute ours in neutral oil -- this also has the advantage of making this a one-pot dish. They say to add ground meat, but we don't do that either, though you could. Instead, once the eggplant is all softened and translucent, we add the sauce and stir, then let it cook together just long enough to heat the sauce. If the sauce is too thick, sometimes we add a splash or two of rice vinegar to loosen it up, but that's optional. Then we serve it over rice. Twelve oz eggplant and one packet sauce only makes enough for two people, but it shouldn't be hard to scale the proportions up, provided you have a big enough pan. Enjoy!

The Lee Kum Kee version is skimpy, salty and has a bitter after taste. There's not enough sauce for the dish and do not double the recipe (as I did). The bitterness grows exponentially. Stay away from this brand. I recommend COOK DO Mabo Tofu sauce or HOUSE FOOD Mabo Tofu instead.

I love this sauce. The flavor tastes authentic and bold, with the right balance of heat and numbing spice. It makes mapo tofu easy and comes out tasting like a restaurant dish. The sauce coats everything well and brings a deep savory flavor without needing much extra seasoning. It saves time and delivers consistent results every time. I will keep buying this and always keep it on hand. and i got it on sale super value for the price!

I like it. It's not overly spicy but sweet-leaning. If you can't eat spicy food or cook for children, this is good. Also good value for the price.

I tried this for convenience when camping and was quite disappointed. Tastes like raw chemicals.

For some reason our local favorite Asian grocery store no longer stocks this brand. we anre addicted to this Mapo Dofu seasoning and was so happy to find it on Amazon and ordered several packages. If you like spicy tofu dishes, this seasoning is great! I add a bit of chicken broth to it to tone down the burn a bit, but the flavor is still great! Stir fry the tofu along with desired veggies and/or meat and top with sliced green onion and serve over rice…yum!

This is a very good, inexpensive rendition of the famous "Pockmarked Old Grandma's Tofu" sauce (Ma Po Tofu). It is not very spicy, so if you make yours hot, add some dried red Japanese chilis (in the Mexican foods section of your market in the West) or even red flaked pepper Italian style, to give it some heat. Sriracha works nicely as well. I don't like tofu all that much, so I use diced eggplant, sauteed in oil with garlic and ginger, and then add ground beef (instead of the pork). Very, very tasty!

Good stuff to make a quick batch of Mapo Tofu. If you’re used to the glass jar version, two sachets are about the same amount of mix you’d get out of one jar .

I am a HUGE fan of Lee Kum Kee (try their Chiu Chow Chili oil, the BEST!). But that is a huge disaster. It only tastes super concentrated ginger and it kills your dish. It is not the nice kind of "spicy" you expect, it makes the dish uneatable as it is so gingery in taste (despite no ginger)... worst than biting into a pure piece of ginger as it is like chemical taste ginger. This is because of sichuan peppercorn which is uneatable to me (kills a dish and overpower the whole dish). Avoid at all cost!

A good sauce

This tastes like taking 20 or so peppercorn seeds and crushing them in your mouth. There is only one flavour, and that is burn. Straight to the bin after one bite. This isn't what mapo tofu is like.