Homemade Chinese Fermented Beancurd Tofu 腐乳

I’m so excited to share this food adventure with you all!  When this idea first hit me I was like hey, what could be simpler and more amazing than making homemade Chinese fermented tofu?  We love how fermenting transforms tofu into a salty, umami packed soft and creamy paste that's just delicious on its own and as a condiment.For newcomers fermented tofu can be strange at first. But just think about how cheese is fermented  milk.  As everyone can agree, cheese is YUMMY!!  Well fermented tofu is similar and just as YUMMY!  Find out more at our post all about fermented beancurd.I'm pleased to report that it's actually really easy to make your own Homemade Chinese Fermented Beancurd Tofu 腐乳.   (Although we did hit a wee road bump in the middle.)  The brining time is long but soonish you too can enjoy amazing umami packed squares of fermented tofu yummiliciousness. One of the reason this idea was so appealing was because it was so simple and basic.  All I needed to start was a square of fresh tofu!  As you know tofu comes in different firmnesses from silky to firm.  I decided on firm tofu since there was a lot of handling and I wanted to give my tofu the best chance of surviving intact.  Next time, however, I think I will use medium firm tofu to allow the final texture of the fermented tofu to be even softer. The tofu is boiled to cook away the slightly grassy flavor of raw tofu. The boiled tofu is scooped out and placed onto paper towels.  The next step is an important one.  As much water as possible needs to be squeezed out of your tofu.  More paper towels on top and a heavy pot will do the trick. The reason that this step is important is because the final stage of preparing fermented tofu is immersion in a brine.  If too much water is still left in the tofu it will dilute the brine and therefore the flavor of the final result. This is the tofu after pressing and many changes of paper towels.  See how it’s now about half the height as the before squeezed photo?  Be patient and really get that water out! I was nervous about this next bit.  To deliberately let something become moldy is not an experience often pursued.  An act of faith, if you will, that it would become something other than a stinky, moldy, dangerous mess.  I guess nowadays we’re just out of touch with this natural process and what to expect of it. I sliced the tofu into neat little cubes, covered it with a plastic bag and left it in a warm dark spot for a couple of days. After three days, here is the result.  Fascinating!  Look at that mold, just growing everywhere.  And it was way less stinky than I was worried it would be.   Note that if there are lots of black and green mold than your fermentation is a bust and you’ll have to start over.  However if you only had a few dots of black mold like I did you can just scrap it off and proceed. This is the part that I love, the part where you pack your homemade foodstuff into jars.  There’s just something so satisfying about it!  Gently, gently pick up the tofu with clean, dry chopsticks and pack them into a jar.   I packed into two jars because I wanted to make one plain flavored and one spicy flavored. This is the plain flavored jar, the tofu packed in and the previously prepared and cooled brine poured in.  The next and final step is super duper easy but long….you’ve got to wait!  After waiting for a month as most recipes indicated we were super excited to try our own homemade Chinese fermented tofu.  We eagerly anticipated a glorious end to this food adventure.  We fetched the jar of fermented tofu out from its dark corner.  Carefully picked one cube out to taste.    Nibble, nibble...wait...it didn't taste right!  There was none of that powerful flavor punch and the texture wasn't meltly enough.  Oh no, major road bump!  Bummer