Our Blogs

Interesting Tasty Facts

Bean Curd Skin (Fuchuk / Fuzhuk) Dessert Recipe Idea

June 20, 2022

What is Bean Curd Skin (Fuchuk / Fuzhuk)?

Tofu skin, also known as beancurd skin, beancurd sheet, or beancurd robes, is a soybean-based culinary product.

When boiling soy milk in an open shallow pan, a film or skin forms on the liquid surface, made mostly of a soy protein-lipid combination. The films are gathered and dried into fuchuk / fuzhuk, which looks like yellowish sheets.

Tofu skin is not technically tofu because it is not made with a coagulant; yet, it has a texture and flavour that is similar to certain tofu products.

In the sixteenth century, people in China, Korea, and Japan started to consume fuchuk / fuzhuk. Today, it’s commonly used in Chinese, Korean, and Japanese cuisine, whether fresh, fermented, or dried.

Types of Bean Curd Skin (Fuchuk / Fuzhuk)

1. Dried Fuchuk / Fuzhuk Sticks

Bunching the fuchuk / fuzhuk produces dried tofu skin in the form of a stick, known as Yuba. Yuba is frequently used as a meat substitute (particularly chicken), which is why it’s also referred to as tofu chicken.

Tofu sticks, like dry fuchuk sheets, must be rehydrated before cooking. One popular method of preparing tofu sticks is to cut them into bite-size pieces after rehydrating and braising in sauce.

This allows them to absorb the flavours of the spices and seasonings in the sauce—a similar process in which real tofu absorbs the flavours of the ingredients it comes into contact with during cooking.

2. Yuba

Like tofu, Yuba is also made from soybeans. A film forms on the surface of soy milk as it boils.

Fresh Yuba resembles thinly sliced tofu, but due to the aggregation of soy proteins that make up this unique ingredient, it is denser and has a bouncy ball quality.

The congealed top of simmering soy milk is traditionally plucked off with a long, big stick and hung to dry to form Yuba.

This could happen several times in a single vat of heating soy milk, a byproduct of tofu production. And that’s the reason why it is called ‘tofu skin’.