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Chinese Name: 酿豆腐
English Name: Stuffed tofu; Stuffed bean curd
Category: Snack小吃
Main Ingredients: Tofu
Stuffed tofu酿豆腐 is a famous Hakka dish客家菜, which is commonly found in Guangdong, Guangxi, Fujian, Hunan, Jiangxi, and other Hakka regions. In 2015, the cooking skills of Huizhou Hakka fermented tofu were listed on Guangdong Provincial Intangible Cultural Heritage List.
The fermented bean curd had already formed a cuisine as early as the Han Dynasty汉朝. The formation of Hakka cuisine flavor is inseparable from the formation of Hakka folk customs. For example, like the Hakka dialect, which retains the ancient charm of Zhongzhou, Hakka cuisine also retains the traditional life custom of Zhongzhou.
It is said that a long time ago, five ethnic Chinese and Xingning people were good brothers who made up their minds. Later, there was a conflict when ordering food. One wanted to eat pork, and the other wanted to eat tofu. Later, the smart restaurant owner came up with a way to have the best of both worlds and made fermented tofu. This dish fully demonstrates the wisdom of the Hakka people and the profound Hakka food culture.
In Hakka areas such as Meizhou City梅州市 (including Wuhua County, which is the most famous for brewing tofu), brewing tofu is a traditional famous dish with a special flavor, which is often used in festivals or when entertaining guests.
Tofu is rich in protein and belongs to complete protein. It not only contains eight kinds of essential amino acids for the human body but also has a close proportion to human needs, with high nutritional value; It can reduce blood lipid, protect vascular cells, and prevent cardiovascular diseases. Pork is rich in high-quality protein and essential fatty acids, and can provide heme (organic iron) and cysteine to promote iron absorption, which can improve iron deficiency anemia; It has the effect of tonifying kidney and blood, nourishing yin, and moistening dryness. Therefore, the nutritional value of fermented tofu is very high.
How to make Stuffed tofu?
Ingredients：
- 1000 grams of bean curd
- 400 grams of lean and fat pork
- 100g fresh mushrooms
- 5 g MSG
- 20 grams of green onions
- 10 g salt
- 40 g lard
- 3 grams of pepper
- 10 grams of soy sauce
- 20 g starch
- 15g sesame oil
Instruction:
- Step 1, Chop the pork into the mud. Remove the roots and wash the onions, then cut them into pieces. Remove the stalks of the mushrooms, wash them, squeeze out the water, and then chop the mushrooms into the mud.
- Step 2, Add dried mushroom paste, chopped green onion, starch, salt, soy sauce, pepper, and lard into the pork paste to form a jelly filling. Pork paste must be chopped by hand, otherwise, the granules are too small to be stuffed into tofu.
- Step 3, Take a tofu block of appropriate size (about 4cm long, 3cm wide, and 1cm thick) and put it on the palm of your hand. Use chopsticks to poke a hole in the middle of the tofu, then take an appropriate amount of filling and put it in the hole, and use chopsticks to poke the filling into the hole (this step is very technical, and people with thick hands and feet can’t do it well. Too much filling is easy to break the tofu; too little filling is not good; filling is not good on the surface). The skill of making fermented tofu is to gently surround the tofu with the fingertips of the thumb, index finger, middle finger, ring finger, and little finger to prevent the tofu from being broken. Follow this method to prepare tofu one by one. Some people think it is too difficult to brew fresh tofu, but they use fried tofu to brew it.
- Step 4, Put the pot on a medium fire, add some lard, and cook until 70% hot. Put the fermented tofu into the pot one by one, and fry it golden yellow. Then add lard, and fry the other side.
- Step 5, Start another pot and add soup, MSG, refined salt, soy sauce, and lard to boil, then add the fried tofu to boil. Then boil the tofu until the juice is collected, and take it out of the pot.
