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Stinky tofu (Chinese: 臭豆腐; pinyin: chòu dòufu) is a form of fermented tofu, which, as the name suggests, has a strong odor. It is a popular snack in East Asia and particularly China, where it is usually found at night markets or roadside stands, or as a side dish in lunch bars.

Wide regional and individual variations exist in manufacture and preparation. Most typically, it consists of tofu which has been marinated in a brine made from fermented vegetables for as long as several months. It can be eaten cold, steamed, stewed, or most commonly, fried. It is often accompanied by chile sauce.

From a distance, the odor of stinky tofu is said to resemble that of sewage, even by its enthusiasts. Here are some typical descriptions of the odor of stinky tofu:

• My wife Diane, who has survived a close encounter with stinky tofu (or phonetically in Mandarin Chinese – tsoh doh-foo), describes it as smelling like a used tampon baked under the Death Valley sun. When I hear that I have to roll my eyes and wonder, “Why the restraint?” Come on, for schnozz sake, it smells much worse. It’s like making a smoothie out of durian melon, Limburger cheese, kim-chee and nuoc mam then letting it fester inside a porta-potty for a month and then, as you have a taste, your dickhead big brother enshrouds a thick blanket over both of you and rips the worst fart ever.

• On my first visit, we sniffed something hellacious wafting over from the table on the left, then from the one on the right. "It smells like baby poo," T said, covering his nose with his shirt. The odor was sharply foul, not the mellow funk of Camembert or the deep, rich stench of durian.

• It smelled like a sewer line had exploded.

• Words do not exist to describe either the fragrance or the magnitude of chou doufu. It was so indescribably putrid that my lungs blatantly refused to inhale... In my short 26 years on this planet, I have only ever come into contact with two odors which have provoked such a reaction from my body’s defense mechanisms. The first was the inside of a chicken farm in Turkey. Rows and rows of hundreds of chickens squawking away, and hundreds of pounds of chicken shit. WOW that stinks! I barely made it out of there with my food still in my stomach. The second odor found me in California on a field trip for a geology class. As we walked toward a cliff to hike down to a beach we were assaulted with a similar odor; it turned out to be a 3-week dead, 80 foot long beached whale (really made me reconsider perfume). As horrific as both of these fragrances were, stinky tofu beat out the chicken shit and gave the beached whale a tight race for the gold.

In spite of stinky tofu's stench, the flavor when eaten is surprisingly mild, and many who first eat stinky tofu out of curiosity and bravado come to enjoy it for flavor. Some have compared it to the taste of blue cheese.

Stinky tofu is said to have been a favorite food of Mao Zedong.

References

Volatile components in deep-fat fried chaw tofu

• Chinese cuisine
• Taiwanese cuisine
• Fermented foods
• Stinky foods
• Soy products