Xunwu Stuffed Tofu 寻乌酿豆腐
Xunwu Stuffed Tofu is featured among the local specialties of Jiangxi.
Xunwu Stuffed Tofu (寻乌酿豆腐) is the Hakka (客家) dish of Xunwu County (寻乌县) in Ganzhou (赣州), Jiangxi, in which small blocks of tofu are filled with a minced stuffing, fried and then simmered. The Xunwu County government calls it the headline dish among the county's stuffed dishes and says every household cooks it for festivals.
How it is made
The county government describes the local method in two steps: a paste of filling is pressed into tofu blocks about the size of a matchbox, which are deep-fried in vegetable oil and then moved to a pot to finish cooking. The Chinese term for the technique, niang (酿), means tucking, stuffing, spreading or wrapping one ingredient into another before heating the whole.
Where it comes from
The dish was already a household custom in 1930. In May that year Mao Zedong (毛泽东) carried out a rural economic survey in Xunwu, later edited as the Xunwu Investigation (寻乌调查). Meizhou Daily (梅州日报) quotes his note on it: at New Year and at festivals every family made stuffed tofu. An opening was cut in the tofu and filled with a chopped mix of pork, fish (鱼子), mushrooms and tiny shrimp pressed flat like dried shrimp skin, called xiake (虾壳), sometimes with garlic and Chinese chives added.
Xunwu's Hakka cooks stuff almost anything, the county government says, from bitter melon, aubergine and lotus root to chillies, eggs, pig's blood curd and the white part of spring onions. Replying in 2025 to a county political consultative conference member's proposal, the Xunwu County Culture, Radio, Television and Tourism Bureau (寻乌县文化广电旅游局) reported that Hakka stuffed tofu, under the local name nangmabao (馕麻包), had been put forward for southern Jiangxi's list of ten famous Hakka dishes. It added that a work plan to build a Hakka stuffed tofu food brand had been drafted.
Jiangxi News (大江网) reported that stuffed tofu made with winter bamboo shoots (冬笋酿豆腐) was among the dishes cooked by 18 contestants at a tofu banquet contest held in Nanqiao town (南桥镇), Xunwu, just before New Year's Day 2025.
Sources & reading
Written from the linked sources and fact-checked against them on 2026-09-24. Recipes and servings vary between kitchens.
Image credits & notes (1)
- Reference photo of a similar dish · 同类菜品参考照片A similar preparation is pictured; the local version may differ. 同类菜品参考照片，当地做法可能不同。Photo: Archon6812 · CC BY-SA 3.0Resized for the web; the photo itself has not been edited. Thumbnails may show a cropped view.
