Tofu is a cornucopia of taste. No really

A dried yellow soyabean is hardly promising. Filled with defensive chemicals that make it largely indigestible, it has to be boiled for hours before it is remotely palatable. The Chinese, who probably domesticated the bean around 1000BC, originally considered it a grain-food that could only be eaten in the form of gruel.

Yet this unappealing bean turned out to be no less miraculous than those that were cast into the ground by Jack of Beanstalk fame: a casket of wonders that could be unlocked to release the richest source of plant protein on the planet, not to mention a cornucopia of exciting tastes and textures.

For the Chinese, it would end up being not just grain but protein, vegetable, relish, seasoning, even pudding. Soy provided the same sort of nutrition as dairy products, but more economically. It helped shape a farming system that, before the advent of chemical fertilisers, supported more people per unit of arable land than any other. And, for a world faced with the upheavals of climate change, it may be one of the keys to our survival.

Some 2,000 years ago, the Chinese began to sprout soyabeans to make “yellow curls”, beansprouts that were used as a medicine. More importantly, they learnt how to ferment them to produce the dark soyabean pastes and soft, intensely flavoured black beans whose descendants you can find in any modern Chinese supermarket.

At some point, people started using the liquid strained from fermenting soyabeans as a seasoning in its own right: this was soy sauce, which first appeared in Chinese literature by its modern name, jiang you (sauce oil), in a 13th-century cookbook, and went on to become more popular than any of its forebears. But fermentation was only the first soya-processing technology that radically shaped the evolution of the traditional Chinese diet. Just as important was the invention of tofu.

In their kitchen in Huaiyuan, not far from the Sichuanese capital, Chengdu, Wang Xiufang and her husband Fu Wenzhong are making tofu the traditional way. Two heavy, circular stones are sandwiched together on a wooden frame that spans a great iron wok. Wang spoons the soaked yellow soyabeans into a hole in the upper stone and turns the wooden handle. As the stones grind together, the beans are crushed between their ridges, the milk spilling lazily down the sides of the lower stone and pooling in the wok below. When all the beans are gone, Fu lights a fire beneath the pot and Wang stirs and scrapes rhythmically as the firewood crackles in the bright glow of the flames and the milk comes slowly to the boil.

After straining the milk and using chopsticks to whip off the skins that form on the surface of the milk as it comes to a simmer, Wang stirs in a solution of mineral salts. Curds begin to form like clouds beneath the surface. She covers the pot with a lid, and a few minutes later the tofu is made. Fu casts a chopstick into the pot like an arrow, and it stands upright, held in the set of the curds — the sign, he tells me, that it’s ready.

Soon afterwards, we all gather around the table for lunch. At its centre, is a large china bowl filled with great clumps of tofu, pale as the moon in their thin golden whey. We spoon them into bowls and, with our chopsticks, pluck off tufts to dip in saucers of inky soy sauce mixed with ground chillies, Sichuan pepper and chopped spring onions. The mineral salts give the tofu a slightly tensile quality that means it can be picked up with chopsticks. It has the soothing freshness of Sicilian ricotta without the “sheepiness”, though the seasonings are quintessentially Sichuanese.

No one is sure when and how tofu was invented. According to legend, it was first made by Liu An, Prince of Huainan, in the second century BC, in what today is northern Anhui Province, during alchemic experiments he conducted in pursuit of longevity, but there is no contemporary evidence to support this tale. Otherwise, Chinese scholars have for years locked horns over a painting discovered on the wall of a Han Dynasty tomb in Henan, a kitchen scene that some think depicts the manufacture of tofu, but others reckon shows the brewing of an alcoholic drink.

The first certain mention of tofu in Chinese literature is in a 10th-century text by Tao Gu, Anecdotes, Simple and Exotic. It mentions a local magistrate who encouraged people to eat tofu instead of meat, for the sake of frugality. The earliest detailed description of the method for making it came in a materia medica compiled in the 16th century.

Most fascinating is the suggestion that the Chinese learnt how to make tofu from the cheese-making nomads who lived on the northern fringes of the empire and periodically invaded. The similarities between the making of tofu and simple cheeses are striking. Years ago, while visiting a family of the Yi ethnic group in south-western Yunnan, I learnt how to milk a goat and make the local fresh cheese, ru bing (milk cakes). The farmer, Luo Wenzhi, heated the fresh goat’s milk in a great wok and coagulated it with vinegar. We ate spoonfuls of the fresh curds and whey, which reminded me of fresh country tofu, and then Luo wrapped the curds in cheese cloth and pressed them into a block, almost as soy milk curds are pressed to make firmer tofu.

Until recently, most westerners had a negative view of tofu, which was seen as bland, a food suitable only for cranky vegans (though they seemed to enjoy the similarly mild ricotta and mozzarella). Its reboot is due in no small part to the proselytising power of the Sichuanese dish Mapo tofu. No one could possibly call this lavish dish, created in late 19th-century Chengdu, in which tender white tofu is braised with minced beef and fermented chilli bean paste and sprinkled with zingy Sichuan pepper, insipid. But it’s also due to a growing diversification in the forms of tofu available to western consumers.

In Chinese markets, tofu stalls are as ubiquitous as cheese stalls are in Europe. They sell a variety of different kinds of tofu. There is silken tofu, tender as crème caramel and unpressed. Tofu that has been pressed to varying degrees of firmness and is suitable for different cooking methods. And golden, deep-fried tofu puffs. The dried skins whipped off simmering soy milk can be added to dishes or used as wrappers. Slabs of tofu that have been pressed to the consistency of Swiss cheese are sold plain, spiced or smoked. There are also waffle-like slabs of tofu that have been criss-cross cut and deep-fried, which absorb flavours beautifully. Sheets of pressed “tofu leather” can be cut thinly and eaten in salads.

It has the freshness of Sicilian ricotta without the ‘sheepiness’, though the seasonings are quintessentially Sichuanese

And then there are the local specialities. The famous “hairy tofu” (mao dou fu) of Anhui, covered in fluffy mould as white as freshly fallen snow, is strangely amorphous, so soft it has no outline; pan-fried and dipped in chilli sauce, it is deliciously cheesy. In western Guizhou, women sell slabs of moulded “stinky tofu” layered with rice straw that look like artisanal Provencal goat’s cheeses. Far smellier are the stinky tofus of Hunan and the Jiangnan region, made by steeping chunks of tofu in a fermentation vat; after deep-frying, the former is dark as volcanic lava, the latter golden; both have smells that smack you in the face at 50 yards, but wonderful flavours.

While these local, artisanal products are usually eaten only in their places of origin, jars of one broad category of fermented tofu can be found in any Chinese supermarket. This fermented tofu, dou fu ru or mei dou fu, is made by encouraging certain fluffy moulds to grow on cubes of tofu, and then either rolling the cubes in salt and spices or immersing them in brine. The process turns the tofu into a strong, salty, umami relish with the consistency and punch of Roquefort. It can be eaten straight from the jar, usually with plain rice, steamed buns or congee, or used in marinades, stews, stir-fries and dips. Local varieties abound: my favourites include “southern milk” (nan ru), in which the tofu comes in a briny sauce that is dark pink from yeasted rice, and Sichuanese fermented tofu in chilli oil.

In China, tofu has never been a fringe vegan or vegetarian food, but part of a normal everyday diet. Often, it’s cooked with a little meat, lard or stock, as with Mapo tofu. But while the Chinese in general have applied their customary culinary ingenuity to tofu, no one has been quite as creative as chefs in Buddhist vegetarian monasteries and restaurants. Buddhist chefs specialise in “imitation meat dishes” (fang hun cai) that are served in temple restaurants and dining halls to visiting patrons and pilgrims, many of whom are used to eating meat in their daily lives but abstain on holy days or visits to monasteries. Cooks in Shanghai and Hangzhou make “vegetarian roast duck” and “vegetarian roast goose” from layers of thin tofu skin, seasoned, steamed and then deep-fried, “vegetarian chicken” from rolls of tofu leather, and “vegetarian ham,” made from tofu leather seasoned darkly with soy sauce, tightly bound and, finally, sliced. Often, their tastes and textures are strikingly similar to real meat and poultry.

Westerners are now beginning to open their eyes to the many and exciting possibilities of tofu. Until the 17th century, the soyabean was terra incognita outside east Asia. It first came to western notice in the form of soy sauce, which was brought by Dutch traders to India in the 17th century (the names for soyabean in all European languages are derived from the Japanese word for soy sauce, shoyu). In the early 19th-century, the plant arrived in Europe, but only as a horticultural curiosity in a few botanical gardens. Later, from the early 20th century onwards, it was grown as a crop in the west, but mainly for oil and animal feed. As HT Huang points out in his magisterial volume “Fermentations and Food Science” (part of Joseph Needham’s Science and Civilisation in China), the rise in soyabean as a crop in the west had little to do with the way it had been used for thousands of years in east Asia.

Tofu seems to have entered into western diets less as a Chinese or Japanese speciality than as a substitute protein for vegans and vegetarians. Most tofu products available in mainstream supermarkets are still western vegetarian food products rather than traditional Chinese forms of tofu. But with the Mapo tofu revolution and a growing awareness that we all need to eat less meat for environmental reasons, the time may be right to invite tofu to step out of the shadows and play a greater role, not only in the diets of vegans and vegetarians, but more generally, as a food that is full of culinary possibilities. Chinese supermarkets are full of an increasingly exciting range of tofu products, and one imagines that mainstream supermarkets will eventually catch up.

Unsurprisingly, it was chef Ferran Adrià, presiding genius of the El Bulli restaurant in Catalonia, who seemed to twig the potential of the soyabean before most in the west: a course called “soya culture” on his 2009 menu included beansprouts, soy milk, fermented tofu, soft tofu, crunchy deep-fried soyabeans, slimy natto, soft-cooked soyabeans, soy oil, soy milk ice-cream, two kinds of miso, tofu skin and spherified soy sauce. A whole spectrum of textures and flavours, and all from a forbidding little dried yellow bean.

Fuchsia Dunlop is the winner of the Guild of Food Writers Food Writing Award 2022

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