Shitai Qidu Fermented Tofu 石台七都臭豆腐
Shitai Qidu Fermented Tofu is featured among the local specialties of Anhui.
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Shitai Qidu Fermented Tofu (石台七都臭豆腐) is a pressed bean curd fermented in a specially made brine, made by hand in family workshops in Qidu (七都镇), an old walled town in Shitai County (石台县), Chizhou (池州), in the interior of southern Anhui.
How it is made
Production is entirely by traditional hand methods and organised by household, passed from father to son, and each family keeps its technique and formula to itself. The Shitai county government describes the equipment as a stone mill, a stone-slab press, mesh sieves, cooling racks, fixed pressing frames, steamers, slurry-straining frames, brine vats and cotton cloths for wrapping the curd.
The soybeans are washed, soaked for 24 hours and ground to a paste in the stone mill. The paste is scalded with boiling water, cooled to about 50°C and set with gypsum. When the soy milk has thickened to a soft curd it goes onto the fixed frames and is pressed into blocks, which are then soaked and fermented in vats of a specially made brine. The county notes that the proportions of the ingredients and control of temperature both demand great care.
Ingredients
The listed ingredients are locally grown soybeans, good spring water, black sesame, lotus-leaf powder, ash from burnt sesame stalks and nine Chinese medicinal herbs, among them cinnamon bark, liquorice and clove.
Flavour and texture
The outside of the finished tofu is black with a greenish tinge. It is soft and tender, salted to a moderate level, and has an unusual fragrance within its fermented stink and a clean flavour.
Where it comes from
Qidu is a thousand-year-old town, one of the few in history to have had a town wall. It borders Huangshan (黄山) to the east, Jiuhua Mountain (九华山) and Taiping Lake (太平湖) to the north, and opens onto Yi County (黟县) to the south. Its position made it a busy market town from early times, summed up in the local saying 'small Shitai County, big Qidu village' (小小石台县，大大七都村). Traders came from all directions, all kinds of handicrafts grew up, and this tofu became one of the best known.
Its exact starting date cannot be established. The craft's inheritor, Wang Shaohua (王少华), says his father's generation has been in the trade for more than 70 years, from which the county estimates a history of more than 120 years.
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Qingyang Lingyang Pressed Tofu 青阳陵阳豆腐干 →
Qingyang Lingyang Pressed Tofu, from the same prefecture, is also a dark pressed tofu, but it is seasoned with broad-bean paste rather than fermented in brine.
Sources & reading
Written from the linked sources and checked sentence by sentence against quoted extracts by a separate reviewer on 2026-09-23. Recipes and servings vary between kitchens.