Fengyang Stuffed Tofu 凤阳酿豆腐
Fengyang Stuffed Tofu is featured among the local specialties of Anhui.
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Fengyang Stuffed Tofu (凤阳酿豆腐) is a dish of Fengyang County (凤阳县) in Chuzhou (滁州), Anhui: slices of soft tofu sandwiched around a pork and shrimp filling, battered, deep-fried until golden and finished in a sweet-and-sour sauce. Local legend ties it to Zhu Yuanzhang (朱元璋), the founding emperor of the Ming dynasty, who was born in Fengyang.
Where it comes from
The story told in Fengyang, as retold by CCTV.com, is that the young Zhu Yuanzhang, poor and living by begging, was given a bowl of stuffed tofu at a small restaurant run by the Huang family inside Fengyang town and kept returning for it. After he became emperor he summoned the Huang family cook to the palace to make the dish for him, and it became a known dish at Ming court banquets under the nickname 'Zhu Hongwu tofu', after his reign title Hongwu (洪武, from 1368).
Stuffed tofu making (酿豆腐制作技艺) is on Chuzhou's list of municipal-level intangible cultural heritage as a traditional craft of Fengyang County.
How it is made
A recipe carried by Anhui News (中安在线) uses 500 g of soft tofu, 100 g of fatty-and-lean pork, 25 g of shelled shrimp and four eggs, with stock and a kilogram of lard for frying. The pork is minced, the shrimp chopped and mixed with salt and wet starch, and both are stir-fried with spring onion and ginger, splashed with cooking wine and stock, seasoned and thickened into a filling. The tofu is cut into thick slices; twelve portions of filling are spread on slices and each is covered with a second slice.
Egg whites are beaten to a foam and mixed with dry starch as a batter. The tofu sandwiches are dipped in it and fried in moderately hot fat until they colour, then fried again in hotter fat until golden. Finally the pieces are simmered briefly in clear stock with salt and sugar over low heat, and vinegar is added as the sauce is thickened.
Flavour and texture
CCTV.com describes the finished dish as cream-yellow in colour, crisp outside and tender inside, and sweet and sour.
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.