One of my earliest memories is of looking down at my feet as my sandals squished into the mud after a summer thunderstorm. One of my hands held a tiny plastic bottle of Yakult, while the other clutched my mother’s hand. She led me up the muddy street through the market where my grandmother was selling vegetables. A pungent, sour odor grew stronger as we neared the end of the street. My mother noticed my distress and said it was just stinky tofu.
Stinky tofu? It was something that I had known about since that day, when I was probably not quite two years old. I never tried it until many years later as an adult, but I had always considered stinky tofu to be a “normal” part of cuisine. It seemed so normal to me, that the first chance I had to try it, I readily ate some and loved it. There was no complaining about the pungent smell, no nibbling at the corners or having a drink on hand to wash it down in case I didn’t like it. I sort of knew that I would like it, because after all, stinky tofu is a normal part of cuisine, right?
I won’t bore you with details repurposed directly from Wikipedia. If you’re intrigued, you can read about it yourself. Just know that stinky tofu is an extremely popular snack in Taiwan and there are many ways to prepare it.
I’ve had stinky tofu fried, steamed, and stewed in málà (numbing and spicy) soup. My favorite style is fried stinky tofu. It doesn’t smell so much when it’s fried, and it’s probably the best place to start if you want to try stinky tofu for the first time.
Still intrigued? Why not search Google Maps for “taiwanese restaurants” in your area and see if they have it?
One more story before I stop writing…
A few months ago, my wife and I were shopping at an Asian grocery store and chanced upon some fresh stinky tofu. Our three kids, ages 7-12, had never tried it before and we also recently bought an air fryer. So we bought some stinky tofu and brought it home. That night, I chopped the tofu into cubes and doused it in potato starch, oil, and marinated salty pepper seasoning (used for another amazing Taiwanese street food dish). I fried it in the air fryer and the results were so delicious! But…
The kids couldn’t get past the smell of it, so they didn’t want to eat it. Also, air fryers work by blowing hot air onto the food, then venting the air back out of the machine. This resulted in our entire house smelling like stinky tofu. We opened all the windows to air out the house, so I’ll bet the neighbors could smell it too! So tasty, yet so smelly! It led to a dilemma: should we make it again?
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