Stir-Fried Lettuce With Seared Tofu and Red Pepper Recipe (2024)

Dear New York Times,
Please don't suggest including chicken broth in a recipe marked Vegetarian and Vegan. This is how well-meaning folk accidentally feed animals to their vegetarian friends. Please just say vegetable broth. Thank you.

Elegant, tasty, simple. That's a useful tip of testing the heat in the skillet with water before adding the delicate lettuce. Otherwise it wilts.

A bit of advance prep makes this a quick, simple and flavorful meal or side dish. Be sure the tofu is well drained and the pan quite hot in order for the tofu to take on a golden color. Flavorful and healthy.

Definitely prep everything ahead of time -- the cooking is remarkably fast. I put the cooked tofu back in the pan and stirred it in with the lettuce etc. Really a delicious, easy dish. It would never have occurred to me to stir-fry romaine.

Had a lot of lettuce to use so this caught my eye..substituted pork for tofu. Very tasty, easy to prepare. Will make again.

I loved the lettuce! The sauce needed a bit more pizazz though. Maybe some sesame oil and a little sugar.

I probably wouldn’t include this on my weekly rotation as there are better stir fries out there. However, a great way to use up lettuce when you don’t want yet another salad.

Made this as written, except someone had used up all of the jalapeños. I used Shichimi Togarashi instead red pepper mix instead, and added a dash of toasted sesame oil to the rice vinegar/soy mixture. It was a delightful dish and a great way to use up romaine lettuce. We’ll do this again.

Excellent use of extra lettuce!

Had an extra head of romaine from my CSA box. Sautéing it was a wonderful idea! I added/substituted a few things based on what I had in my fridge: five spice tofu (available at any Asian supermarket! It’s a nice extra firm variety with flavor already infused), broccoli instead of red bell pepper, and a few dollops of “Lao Gan Ma” (the famous “grandma” chili sauce). I also added a little bit of Korean chili powder as someone else suggested. Great flavor and healthy!

No flavor can’t recommend I used high quality soy and wine didn’t help

Simple, flavorful and comes together fast. I had a big head of lettuce from this week’s CSA I needed to use up; this recipe fit the bill perfectly. Substituted the red pepper for an onion (what I had on hand) and probably doubled the garlic and ginger. I also threw some Korean red chili flakes in the soy sauce/rice wine mixture. Stir fried some rice noodles to add to the mix. So good.

This is good but definitely not serve 4. I think serve 2-3.

I'm not much of a tofu person but i loved this recipe, very easy and I used escarole for the lettuce.

Dear New York Times,
Please don't suggest including chicken broth in a recipe marked Vegetarian and Vegan. This is how well-meaning folk accidentally feed animals to their vegetarian friends. Please just say vegetable broth. Thank you.

This is a really good recipe, but what is even better in my opinion is the one very closely related to it (and which seems largely ignored on here!) that has bean sprouts instead of lettuce: https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1013560-stir-fried-bean-sprouts-with...
This one with lettuce is a tad confusing for a moment when you realize that it never has you do anything with the tofu you've cooked; but you could also cook it the same way for the one with bean sprouts.

very simple and delicious. I froze the tofu first and defrosted it- the texture is much more porous and soaks up the sauce more. Great simple dish. So glad to find something to do with all the excess lettuce!

I made this one weeknight when I had no fresh tofu, only frozen. I boiled the tofu in lightly salted water to thaw, carefully squeezed it to removed excess water, then wrapped it in a towel and pressed it under a cast iron skillet while I prepped the rest of the ingredients. It gave a wonderful texture to this already great dish.

Had a lot of lettuce to use so this caught my eye..substituted pork for tofu. Very tasty, easy to prepare. Will make again.

really good and easy. i have made it without the tofu as a side dish with rice and some grilled chicken.