It was only natural for my roommates to be wary of my latest home cooking project. “I’m thinking of making stinky tofu this summer,” I said, a bouquet of amaranth leaves in my hands. “What do you think?” Their initial excitement was replaced with skeptical stares, until one of them asked the obvious question: “So what will our home smell like?”
Stinky tofu is in a league of its own. Known for its intense and often polarizing aroma and pungent taste, this popular street food delights fans of funky kimchi and aged cheeses like Gorgonzola and Roquefort. Its preparation runs the gamut: I’ve seen it stewed, barbecued, steamed, braised, and deep-fried. Most commonly, you’ll find cubes of stinky tofu fried and paired with piquant pickles or doused in a combination of garlic, soy sauce, and chile crisp. While I find its flavor sublime, not everyone does, and some go so far as to compare its smell to rotting food. But even the skeptics can agree on one thing: Stinky tofu is a powerful combination of funk, sour, umami, sweet, and spice that fires on all cylinders.
Stinky tofu, and its myriad of preparations, have fans around the world, especially in East Asia. You’ll find endless variations in China ranging from crispy black squares in Changsha, Hunan to Sichuan-style stinky tofu flavored with chiles and a numbing seasoning made from Sichuan peppercorns. All over Taiwan, vendors at night markets serve stinky tofu as a hearty stew, savory stir-fry, or deep-fried skewer slathered in a delicious soy paste.
My heart admittedly belongs to fried stinky tofu. I love it for its crispy exterior and tender insides and the way it effortlessly soaks up sauces. It’s also one of the best introductions to the dish, since deep-frying these golden nuggets tends to mellow out the stronger flavors.
Truthfully, I had never considered making my own stinky tofu until I stumbled into Clarissa Wei’s cookbook Made in Taiwan. In it, she presents stinky tofu as a highly accessible recipe that can be completed at home in a few short weeks. I was immediately intrigued and decided to see if I could pull it off in my shared New York City apartment.
In reality, stinky tofu is seldom made at home or in restaurants. Because it is primarily served as street food, its vendors gather in one designated area to contain its potent stench. (The few restaurants that do serve it often use frozen or pre-packaged versions.) Unlike these outdoor stalls, I cook in an enclosed space with roommates who regularly use the kitchen. Already, that made me nervous. But as I soon learned, while the process does involve many pungent aromas, with a few intentional steps, it’s entirely possible to make stinky tofu respectfully in a communal apartment.
For all of stinky tofu’s heady aromas, Wei’s recipe for the Taiwanese version is relatively straightforward and, going by my personal trials, foolproof. The main ingredient to procure is amaranth, which comes in both red and green varieties. (Not to be confused with the seeds of the amaranth plant.) Also known as Chinese spinach, this summer plant produces a positively stinky aroma when lacto-fermented with two percent salt.
In case amaranth isn’t available near you, there are suitable substitutes. Pao-Yu Liu, a Taiwanese fermenter based in London, has successfully cultivated a stinky brine with radish greens, while others begin with a base of mustard greens. These components are added to an actual brine made from salt and the leftover water that’s used to soak rice. Ingredients such as shrimp shells, peppercorns, bamboo shoots, shiitake mushrooms, tangerine peels, and herbs can also be added for more robust flavors.
To devise the fried stinky tofu recipe for her cookbook, Wei went down all the rabbit holes. As she interviewed a stinky tofu vendor in Taipei, she had an epiphany. “Most people think it’s rotten tofu, which is not true at all,” she says. Instead of letting the tofu decompose in the brine for weeks on end, she noted that chunks of tofu only sat in the brine for a few days. The tofu must begin fresh, but the brine can be used indefinitely. Mara Jane King, the director of fermentation for IE hospitality in Colorado, once tried tofu from a tofu master’s 50-year-old brine. “It fills your sinuses up and has this peeping creaminess and funky smell that’s almost tingly when you eat it,” she recalls.
Wei, who has eaten her fair share of stinky tofu, has her own ideal version: “The perfect stinky tofu has complexity and layers of flavor, like a really well-aged cheese,” she says. “It should be porous, like a sponge, but it shouldn’t fall apart when you bite into it.”
While the smell of a stinky tofu stall is unmistakable, I found it surprisingly easy to control the brine’s odors at home. I placed the sterilized jar with fermenting brine, lid on, in a corner with ample ventilation. On occasion, I would crack open the jar to let bubbles escape and catch a brief whiff. (Truth be told, it was really stinky.) But once I screwed the lid back on, the smell was so faint that I nearly forgot about it, and none of my roommates said anything either.
After two months of fermentation, it was time to add the tofu to the developed brine. At this step, Wei recommends selecting a firmer, compressed tofu. “The brine is really strong and can break down the tofu quickly if you aren’t careful,” says Wei. Like her, I opted for a firm tofu and removed excess liquid from it. I then cut the block into one-inch cubes and left it in the brine for three days.
I knew the challenges of frying the tofu, however simple, would require extra consideration in a shared household. Wei has a few words of advice: crack open a window and leave the vent on. Knowing my roommates, I took extra measures too. I found a portable camping stove and double fried the tofu outside, where the potent scent was quickly lost to the wind. (Note: The tofu blocks will be less stinky than the actual brine.) The result was just what I wanted: extra-crispy cubes with a faint whiff of a musty barnyard and yet a superb creamy taste.
Personally, I enjoyed making stinky tofu, especially since it’s rarely made from scratch in restaurants and I could share the first bites of this surprisingly straightforward, homemade meal with my roommates. And if you make it too, you’ll find this project and its mounting smells intensely rewarding. But admittedly, it won’t be for everyone. If you have roommates who balk at unfamiliar smells, perhaps it would be better to introduce them to the wonders of stinky tofu outside your home first.
Jess Eng is a food and culture writer based in New York City. Her work appears in the Washington Post, the New York Times, TASTE, and more.
Lily Fossett is a freelance illustrator based in Bath, UK. She has a passion for portraying narrative in her illustrations and uses digital media to explore color and texture.
