Chicken douhua in clear broth 鸡豆花
Chicken douhua in clear broth is featured among the local specialties of Chengdu and Sichuan.
Chicken douhua in clear broth (鸡豆花) is a traditional Sichuan dish made from chicken but named after douhua (豆花), soft bean curd, because it looks and feels like it in the mouth. It belongs to the side of Sichuan cooking that is neither numbing nor hot: the taste is light and mellow, and the point of the dish is the clear stock around the curds.
How it is made
Chicken breast is trimmed of its membranes and sinew and chopped or beaten into a very fine paste. Clear stock, salt and other seasonings are stirred in to make a loose chicken batter. Stock is brought to a bare simmer and the batter is poured in slowly; it sets into snowflake-like curds, which are lifted out to make the dish.
The stock is the laborious part. Liao Guijun (廖贵均), a Chengdu-born chef working in Hangzhou, simmers chicken, duck, ham and large pork bones for four or five hours, then clarifies the stock with minced meat, repeating the step until the cloudy white soup turns clear to the bottom; one pot takes seven or eight hours. He then cuts the set curds into pieces and steams them in white porcelain vessels with more clear stock and matsutake mushrooms.
Flavour and texture
In Liao's version, a block of snow-white curd floats in amber stock and could pass for real bean curd. The curd is soft and springy, fine-grained inside like tofu, with no heaviness or graininess.
Where it comes from
Hangzhou.com.cn (杭州网) groups chicken douhua with furong chicken slices (芙蓉鸡片) and snowflake chicken (雪花鸡肉) as three classic Sichuan dishes of the 'eat chicken without seeing chicken' (吃鸡不见鸡) kind, and compares its method with Hangzhou fish balls.
Sources & reading
Written from the linked sources and checked sentence by sentence against quoted extracts by a separate reviewer on 2026-09-25. Recipes and servings vary between kitchens.
Recipes and servings vary between kitchens.