Fermented Bean Curd (腐乳 Furu)

Fermented bean curd is often served as part of a Chinese breakfast.

As the name suggests, it is made from bean curd and is usually available in two different varieties, the white and the red. Bean curd, as told by the previous article, first appeared as early as the Western Han Dynasty (206 B.C.-24 A.D.), but fermented bean curd had to wait for several hundred years.

A story tells about a bean curd tradesman of the Tang Dynasty (608-907), whose business was rather slack at a time. His bean curd began to become mouldy and, to prevent it from further deteriorating, he sprinkled fine salt over it and put is away in a jar. As he opened the jar a few days later, he found to his surprise that the salted bean curd, instead of having gone bad, greeted him with an inviting smell he had never known before. Thus the first lot of fermented bean curd was born.

This food has since become very popular in China, and it is made by a rather simple process. Fresh bean curd is cut into cubes and mixed with nodule mould and left to ferment for 2-3 days until a mouldy coating appears on the surface. (Made at home, the bean curd may be left to ferment by itself, but this takes about 10 days.) The bean curd is then salted, seasoned with other condiments and sealed in jars. It is put away and kept for 4-5 months to become savoury and marketable.