Photo: 胡蘿蔔 · CC BY-SA 4.0
Douhua (Silken Soy Curd Set with Gypsum)
The silken soy curd eaten across the Chinese-speaking world: fresh soy milk, one pour of coagulant, and then nothing. The one recipe on this site that curdles dairy on purpose is rasgulla, and that uses acid to make curds you lift out. Douhua uses a calcium salt instead, and the difference is structural: calcium ions bridge between soy proteins and set the whole pot as a single gel, so there are no curds to lift — the soy milk becomes a pudding where it stands. Which is why, once it is poured, you do not touch it.
Ingredients
- The soy milk
- dried soybeans · soaked overnight; they come up to about 700g300 g
- water · eight times the dry weight2.4 L
- The coagulant
- calcium sulfate (food-grade gypsum) · 0.25 percent of the soy milk; sets soft and smooth6 g
- water · to slake the gypsum50 ml
- potato starch · optional; holds the gypsum in suspension so it does not settle10 g
- Other coagulants
- nigari (magnesium chloride) · stronger flavour, coarser set5 g
- GDL · glucono delta-lactone; releases acid slowly and gives the smoothest set6 g
- Sweet syrup
- dark brown sugar150 g
- water200 ml
- ginger · sliced; the Cantonese way30 g
- Toppings
- boiled peanuts100 g
- sweet red beans100 g
- taro balls · the Taiwanese way100 g
Steps
Wash the beans and soak them overnight. They are ready when a bean splits in two under a fingernail and the inside is flat rather than dished.
- ⏲ 30 min
Grind the soaked beans very fine with the 2.4L of water, then pour it into a cloth and wring it hard to strain out the okara. Thin soy milk will not set at all — with too little solid in it there is not enough protein for the calcium to bridge.
- ⏲ 15 min
Bring the soy milk to the boil, stirring, and hold it seven minutes past the boil. That is what drives off the raw bean smell and the antinutrients, and it unfolds the proteins so the coagulant has somewhere to attach. It boils over easily, so stay with it.
- ⏲ 3 min
Slake the gypsum and starch in 50ml of water and pour it into the bottom of a large bowl. The trick is not to add coagulant to soy milk but to pour soy milk onto coagulant.
- ⏲ 5 min
Let the soy milk fall to 85C. Then pour it in from about 30cm up, in one go. The force of the fall is the mixing, and it is the only stirring this dish gets.
- ⏲ 20 min
Skim the foam, cover it, and leave it twenty minutes without moving it at all. Disturbed while the gel is forming, the network tears and separates into whey and lumps, and it will not set again.
- ⏲ 10 min
Simmer the brown sugar, water and ginger into a syrup.
- ⏲ 5 min
Serve by shaving the surface in thin sheets with a flat ladle into bowls. Dug into and turned over, it breaks up. Pour the syrup over and add the toppings.
Tips & Variations
Variations
- Cantonese: nothing but a ginger and brown-sugar syrup. The simplest and the commonest.
- Taiwanese: taro balls, peanuts, red beans, mung beans and taro, with ice in summer and hot syrup in winter.
- Sichuan savoury douhua: soy sauce, chilli oil, zhacai, fried soybeans and spring onion. The same gel in a completely different coat.
- By coagulant: calcium sulfate (gypsum) sets soft and mild, nigari sets firmer and tastes stronger, GDL gives the smoothest set of all. Shop-bought silken tofu is usually GDL.
- Its relation to tofu: stop at this stage and it is douhua; ladle the curd into a mould and press the water out and it is tofu. Pressing is the only thing that separates them.
Tips
- It sets differently from rasgulla. That page breaks milk with acid, which separates it into curds and whey so the curd can be lifted out. Here calcium ions bridge between soy proteins and stand the whole thing up as one gel — there is nothing to lift out, because the pot of soy milk becomes the pudding. Acid gives you lumps; a salt gives you a gel.
- Once it is poured, do not touch it. Move it during the twenty minutes the gel is forming and the network tears, and a torn network does not rejoin. Douhua that has separated into whey and crumbs cannot be rescued.
- Pour the soy milk onto the coagulant, not the other way round. Added afterwards and stirred, it sets in patches wherever it lands. Pouring from a height in one go is both the most even mixing you can do and the only stirring the dish gets.
- The temperature window is narrow. Around 85C. Hotter and it sets coarse and weeps; below about 75C it never firms.
- The soy milk has to be strong. Eight parts water to one of dry beans is the limit. Shop-bought soy milk usually fails: too little solid, and additives that interfere with setting.
- Seven minutes past the boil. Soy protein has to unfold before a coagulant can attach to it. Kill the heat at the boil and you get a raw bean smell and a poor set.
- How you serve it is part of the cooking. Shave the surface in thin sheets with a flat ladle and the smooth faces survive; dig in with a spoon and the same gel arrives looking like rubble.
The basics behind this dish
- Dairy and Heat: Why Cream Splits and Butter BurnsThe temperature butter burns at, the conditions that split cream, the order yoghurt goes in. Dairy fails under heat in a small number of specific ways, so avoiding them is specific too.
- Choosing Flour: Protein Is the Whole StoryBread, plain and cake flour differ in one number: protein. What that number decides, how to fake one from another, and the things sold beside flour that are not flour at all.
- Eggs: Coagulation Temperatures and What They DecideWhite sets at 62°C, yolk at 68°C. Those two numbers explain scrambled eggs, boiled eggs, steamed custard and crème anglaise all at once.
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