Rice Tofu

Rice tofu is not a soy product at all but a square "tofu" set from ground rice cooked with edible alkali (or plant-ash water), pale yellow, springy and slippery, diced for cold dressing or for soup.

Rice tofu is found across the mountain borderlands of Hunan, Guizhou, Sichuan and Hubei, an old method of the Miao and Tujia peoples who set rice with natural alkali water; cheap to make and cooling in summer, it spread through the towns of western Hunan and became a common Fenghuang street snack.

Cold rice tofu is dressed with chilli oil, pickled radish, vinegar, garlic water and scallion, sour and spicy, slippery and appetite-sharpening; it can also go into soup or hotpot, a fine cooling food in summer.

The springy texture set from rice and the sour-spicy western-Hunan dressing of chilli oil and pickled radish are what set rice tofu apart from soybean tofu.