Comments on: Wet Bean Curd

By: Chromeshopkid

Chromeshopkid — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 20:00:18 +0000

Furu was obviously developed in order to preserve tofu or doufu for the winter months when food supplies were scarce, this is called survival, if you don’t like fine, don’t eat it, but two billion Chinese can’t be wrong.

By: qwerty

qwerty — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 12:58:46 +0000

Yeah your not supposed to eat a whole cube in one go. Like JD said its a condiment, look at it as something similar to anchovies. I was taught to eat it by breaking tiny bits off a cube and combining it with a spoonful of rice etc.

By: The BigDingus Blogger

The BigDingus Blogger — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 18:39:39 +0000

@JD: Well, honestly, I *do* taste the things I add to dishes while cooking, and I don’t add them if they taste funny. A notable exception is Southeast Asian fish sauce, but even that is an ingredient that I’ve grown to appreciate to the point that I can tell better stuff from cheaper stuff. The wet bean curd I tried was pretty hard to imagine as something I’d stir into a dish while cooking. Also, its texture (non-tiny blocks of tofu) isn’t something that I can easily imagine as a “condiment”, most of which are much closer to smooth pastes, liquids, or granular powders.

By: JD

JD — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 17:42:09 +0000

Did you completely miss the point that this mainly product is used as a condiment when cooking? Do you also eat minced garlic out of the jar, or chug bottles of tabasco?

Only the high quality stuff is eaten, in SMALL quantities, as an accompaniment to rice or noodles.

By: The BigDingus Blogger

The BigDingus Blogger — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 12:36:30 +0000

Thanks for the information. Try as I might, I can’t get beyond the fact that the stuff tastes just terrible to me. I’m not generally very picky. Maybe I’ll try again; perhaps a different brand. The main issue was that it’s so salty - perhaps served with plain white rice it’d be edible.

Water spinach is very tasty, though I understand it’s an invasive weed.

By: min

min — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 06:27:41 +0000

I happen to have a bottle of fermented bean curd of the exact same brand in my fridge, although it is of a different flavor - red, not spicy.

Back in Shanghai, I often saw neighbors serving it as a condiment to plain rice porridge on breakfast tables. I’ve also seen people using it as a spread on plain steamed buns.

When I came to the States, my Cantonese friends introduced me to a popular Cantonese dish, “sautéed water spinach with fermented bean curd”, like the one pictured here http://www.flickr.com/photos/hotdot/581160958/. I loved it and occasionally would stock a small bottle of the bean curd in my fridge when water spinach was in season.

A few more years passed by when I discovered a recipe in a Martin Yan cookbook that called for the bean curd as an ingredient. The recipe was for a red-cooked pork rib stew. I’ve had consistent success cooking with the recipe (much more consistent than my occasional experiment with the water spinach dish), so I now stock the fermented bean curd just for this pork rib recipe.

By: Carlos

Carlos — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 14:50:33 +0000

Ketchup is a Cantonese word that literally means Tomato Sauce.

Wet Bean Curd is mostly used for flavoring, like a type of solid sauce. The white kind can be eaten with rice

By: The BigDingus Blogger

The BigDingus Blogger — Thu, 31 May 2007 22:15:15 +0000

I’ve since looked around (Google searches) and it may be the case that this stuff is a perfectly ordinary representative of wet (or “fermented”) bean curd. That doesn’t make me like it, but perhaps this gets Chan Moon Kee off the hook I hung it on.