Why do few people make tofu in rural areas now?

Three major pains in life, punting while the iron is hot to make tofu.

Home is in the countryside, and tofu is indispensable around you, especially in winter. Tofu is a dish that must be ordered at noon every day. Tofu at home is also more delicate, and it is made of sour water, not modern lime. In particular, the freshly made tofu without water is fresh, sweet and soft, and melts in the mouth. It also has the bean flavor of tofu itself, and does not change for an oyster.

So why are fewer and fewer people making tofu?

Tofu itself ranks among the three major hardships, and it is by no means a hollow reputation. Every New Year, rural families make their own tofu, which makes me understand the process of making tofu. First, pull beans, now it's all machines. Just add water and beans to the machine and break them in half. This is called bean yellow. Next, boil the bean curd, pour the pulp into the pot and start cooking. A full pot of water needs to be boiled Then filter the bean dregs, and filter out the bean dregs in the soybean milk. Bean dregs are good feed for pigs. The last and most important step, ordering tofu, needs to control the heat, the amount of sour pulp and the temperature. The tofu after ordering is tofu brain, which is put in a special mold to filter out the water, which is what we call tofu blocks.

Traditional bean yellow

Filter bean dregs

Beat tofu

Is it dizzy just listening to this pile of processes? Generally, rural women need a good figure to make tofu. Usually couples cook. My family usually cooks 4 pots a day, and all the good ones are 6.7 pots of tofu a day. This is quite labor-intensive. Once, my aunt who made tofu complained to my mother that my greatest wish in my life was to have a good sleep during the New Year. Only during the Chinese New Year, tofu shops don't have to open.

The reason why fewer and fewer people don't make tofu is fatigue.

Neighbors have been cooking tofu all their lives, but now they only cook a pot of traditional tofu for one day, and all the neighbors eat it. By making tofu, he earned millions of dollars and built a small building. Another tofu chef I know moved down from the mountain and worked hard to make tofu. Ten years later, he bought a house and a car. But you can eat this bitter.

Another reason is the progress of science and technology. Now steamed tofu is made by machines, but tofu is not delicious. Sold to large supermarkets, bought by city people. Traditional tofu does not have such a large shipment.

Finally, the younger generation doesn't want to suffer this. I haven't seen a tofu manufacturer let their children do this.

Perhaps the traditional tofu industry will wither slowly, or even withdraw from the social stage, just like many ancient laws. After a few decades, I'm afraid it's hard to eat another bite of hot sweet tofu.

Making tofu is a piece of cake for rural people, and lesbians in every household can cook it, but now only some old people in rural areas stay at home. Old people all know that their children will come back for the New Year and don't make tofu because: ① Many old people can't paddle; People can't grind a lot of beans with a stone mill; Now that food is abundant, tofu is not a home-cooked dish, but also used to send tofu to relatives and friends.

When we didn't go out to work before, our local rural people cultivated land and soybeans were ground to make tofu. Before busy farming, grinding bean curd made dried bean curd. Every Chinese New Year, every household in grinding bean curd must grind several barrels of soybean milk with a stone mill, boil the soybean milk in a pot, filter out the bean dregs with gauze, arrange the brine, put a large pot of white tofu and squeeze it with tofu, and the tofu for the Chinese New Year will be ready. Nowadays, many rich dishes are bought from supermarkets during the Spring Festival, and relatively few people make tofu.

Yes, in the past, when the countryside wanted to celebrate the New Year, it was necessary to make a tofu by itself, and families with small population also had to make a tofu in partnership. There are really fewer people making their own tofu now. The reason is related to the following:

1. Tofu is now made by professionals, and it is convenient for people to eat tofu, so they can buy it whenever they eat it.

There are fewer soybeans in rural areas now. If you want to make tofu yourself, you have to buy soybeans, please.

In the past, the vegetables people ate during the Spring Festival were mainly Chinese cabbage, radish and potatoes, and more were tofu dishes. Now people can eat more vegetables. It takes about 20 Jin of soybeans to make a tofu, producing 100 pieces of tofu. Many of them are bad if they can't eat at all.

These are the reasons why people seldom make tofu. Personal opinion, welcome to discuss. thank you

In the 1980s, before the Spring Festival in rural areas, in many places, every household had to make tofu once. Even if they don't make it themselves, they will exchange food for some tofu and store it before the Chinese New Year. It's just that this custom is disappearing. Why?

Why did the countryside make their own tofu the year before last?

To know why this custom is disappearing, we must first analyze why there is this custom.

1, visiting relatives, you need to prepare hospitality materials.

Chinese New Year is a great event, especially in rural areas. A wanderer who is away from home will go home for the New Year, and other relatives, big and small, will visit each other during the New Year.

Every family should prepare some meals for these relatives. Tofu used to be a dish on the rural dining table (fried tofu bubble). Moreover, it is convenient for a family to eat cabbage and tofu soup, so it is necessary to prepare some in advance.

2. If the market is closed for the New Year, you need to prepare materials in advance.

In the past, the means of subsistence in rural areas were generally bought and sold through the rural market, which is also a mobile market, that is, the rural market.

Usually it is a five-day episode, and the recent market is six episodes a month. During the spring outing, the market was closed. When I was a child, there was an established custom in my hometown, that is, rural merchants generally didn't open their doors until the fifteenth day of the first month.

Few markets were opened before the Tenth Five-Year Plan, but this period happened to be the most frequent stage for rural relatives to visit and entertain. In order to prevent housewives from cooking without rice, materials were prepared in advance.

Tofu is one of them. In some families, they will do something for the New Year. In the past, there was a stone mill in the countryside, and I planted soybeans in my own land, so I saved money in grinding bean curd!

Even if you don't do it, you will buy it in advance and store it, otherwise there will be no place to buy it after the year!

Actually, it's not just tofu. In addition to tofu, people will prepare a lot of food, all kinds of meat, fish, vegetables, and even steamed bread and fried food. ...

Why do few people make tofu in rural areas now?

Most of the rural Chinese New Year scenes mentioned above were in the 1980s and 1990s and before. Slowly, with the improvement of rural living conditions, many customs have changed.

For example, my hometown used to cook a large pot of meat during the Spring Festival. In order to save money, some also kill pigs themselves, usually two or three households share a pig; Will also steam steamed bread, steamed and packed in big bags; Grind ten catties of beans to make tofu. ...

It's rare to do this now that the countryside is celebrating the New Year. Why?

1, rich dining table, tofu is not mainstream.

Living conditions in rural areas are better and dining tables are richer. Dishes that I didn't want to eat before have become common dishes on the table, and tofu stewed with cabbage is not as frequent as before, and I don't need to cook so much.

2, easy to buy

Now, except the market, shops in rural towns are open almost every day, so it is convenient to buy food and shop, and people don't need to reserve those foods in advance.

If you want to eat tofu, just go to the grocery store to buy it. It is sold in the morning of New Year's Eve and in the afternoon of New Year's Eve, which is extremely convenient and affordable.

Step 3 make trouble for yourself

Relatively speaking, making tofu by yourself has become a hassle. In the past, it was an old craft to make tofu in rural areas. Soybeans were ground with a stone mill, then filtered with gauze, soybean milk was cooked in a large pot, and tofu was ordered (with brine or gypsum), and 10 kilograms of tofu was made for a long time.

This is not as convenient as buying. Besides, in rural areas, you don't need a stone mill to make tofu. The electric mill in grinding bean curd is fast and good, and the technology of making tofu has also improved. Farmers don't have to prepare these things themselves, just eat ready-made tofu.

The production technology of tofu has changed, the living conditions in rural areas have improved, the lifestyle has changed slowly, and many customs have gradually disappeared. Tofu was made years ago and is rare in many places.

However, in my hometown, some people will still buy more pieces of tofu before the new year. There is no reason, they just like to eat this kind of tofu! Which tofu is so delicious is naturally made by my father. He is seventy years old. He likes to make tofu in winter and sell it in the streets. He's too busy to stop!

In the past, the flavor of the year was made by the old man himself. Entering the twelfth lunar month, the family began to prepare for the New Year. Go to the market first and grind rice noodles. Get ready for the Spring Festival. Then kill pigs and sheep. After the episode of the sixteenth lunar month, each family brewed an altar of old wine. Cooking and frying all kinds of food, the number of samples is still quite rich. I have to make two tofu myself near the 30 th anniversary. On the day of making tofu, you can always eat tofu brain with bean flavor and original flavor. I think it is really delicious.

Try to answer the following questions:

Let's talk about making tofu first, and then talk about why few people make tofu in rural areas now.

First, make tofu.

I grew up in the countryside of western Liaoning in the northeast. There are several festivals where tofu must be cooked, that is, Chinese New Year (Spring Festival), the 15th day of the first month (Lantern Festival), February 2nd, May (Dragon Boat Festival) and August (Mid-Autumn Festival). Introduce the most traditional tofu practices:

1. bean selection: remove impurities from soybeans (pebbles, bumps, platycodon grandiflorum and pod skin are mixed in the beans, or picked by hand or screened or winnowed);

2. "Broken" beans: crush the selected beans with a stone mill and separate the bean skin from the watercress;

3, remove the bean skin: use a dustpan to separate the watercress and bean skin in the broken beans;

4. Soak beans: put the cleaned watercress into a container, first put the well water with bean weight (warm water in winter), then pour the watercress, stir while pouring, preferably with a rolling pin. After stirring, add well water until it is about 200 mm higher than watercress. If the container with ceramic or ceramic basin is used, insert a rolling pin in the middle (vertically) to prevent the container from bursting;

5, grinding beans: use a stone mill to grind the soft watercress into soybean milk foam (it takes one night in winter and short in summer, so don't take too long to prevent watercress from fermenting);

6. Boiling water: it is carried out at the same time as grinding beans, and the dosage is about 4 times the weight of beans;

7. Brewing soybean milk foam: put the ground soybean milk foam into a pot, add boiling hot water, and stir while adding water;

8. Overpackaging: filter the brewed soybean milk with professional filter cloth similar to gauze, and package the raw soybean milk and bean dregs;

9. Boil soybean milk: Put a thin layer of soybean oil on the bottom of the pot, pour in raw soybean milk and boil. Be sure to stir with a small fire to prevent "burning the pot". At the same time, it also prevents "spraying" the pot. In the process of cooking, put a little raw soybean milk next to the pot and find that there is a phenomenon of "spraying" the pot. Add raw soybean milk, wait for 15-30 minutes after the raw soybean milk is cooked, and take the cooked soybean milk out of the pot.

10, brine: Wash the cooked soybean milk into the tank and order the brine. (Brine is bought in a spice shop. It is highly toxic, so be careful. This process is the key to the quality of tofu. Slowly add, stirring while adding, until it becomes tofu brain;

1 1, press molding: after pouring the tofu into the mold, add the basin and water to increase the weight, and then keep the pressure for 20-30 minutes;

12. Segmentation: Cut the pressed tofu into "white and tender" tofu with a small and thin knife as needed.

Second, why doesn't anyone make tofu?

The above 12 step is a traditional practice, and now some steps are simplified or omitted. According to the current situation in rural areas, there are not so many people and not so many people eat so much tofu. The trivial things are left to professionals. Although what professionals do is not "original ecology", it is convenient. Think of an old saying of China as a conclusion: "You can't have your cake and eat it …".

Why are there so few people making tofu in rural areas now?

In fact, tofu is often seen in rural areas, but let's talk about it in detail. Generally speaking, few people make tofu. Why?

Selling tofu does not make money.

For selling tofu, the profit from making money is negligible. In addition, the cost is relatively high, so many people don't make tofu now, mostly for this reason.

After all, when many things can be done, many people will give up doing industries with lower profits when other things can make less profits than they can do.

Selling tofu really doesn't make money. We have done statistics here. Ten years ago, there were two or three households selling tofu in our village. But it seems that only one company has been selling tofu in the past two years. In fact, they are raising pigs. Selling tofu is just one thing. They can also feed the remaining residue of tofu to pigs.

Food is abundant.

Nowadays, vegetables and food are abundant, so tofu is not a product that people often eat, but a vegetable.

For a single vegetable in the past, vegetables were not the most commonly eaten products, so tofu replaced this delicious taste.

Now it's good for people's lives. The food we eat every day is selective, and we can eat a lot of meat.

Therefore, in this case, it is not the food often eaten in rural areas, so the number of people making tofu is gradually decreasing.

In the past, modern mechanical production by hand

The tofu cooked now is really not delicious. It's really delicious for tofu made by hand in the past, but it's not very delicious compared with tofu made now.

We don't know whether the tofu we are eating now is the water tofu in the south or the tofu in the north.

Tofu in the south is generally smaller, while tofu in the north is larger. So the feeling of eating is different. Tofu in the south tastes delicate, while tofu in the north itself is rough.

But now most shopping malls are made by mechanical and manual technology, which is rare.

The demand is not big, and the number of people who do it will also decrease.

It is the same for any industry, but when the demand is small, the number of people in this industry will gradually decrease.

Just like this tofu, it is normal that the number of people who make tofu is gradually decreasing when the demand is not great now.

In the update iteration, some industries will disappear. Many industries are the same. In the development of time, when the demand gradually decreases, naturally the whole industry will gradually decrease or disappear with time.

There are several reasons for this. First, making tofu is time-consuming and laborious, and the profit is low. It takes a day to make two plates of tofu, about twenty or thirty Jin of beans, from grinding, boiling, shaping to selling, and earn seventy or eighty yuan. Secondly, the paddle beater replaces the heavy stone mill, which saves some working hours, but the quality of the paddle is poor, rough and tastes bad. Third, as the saying goes, everything has its vanquisher when the brine points to tofu. Brine tofu has a delicate taste and rich bean flavor, but the dosage is not easy to master. Tofu can't be shaped without brine, and it will feel bitter if you order more tofu. This technology is on the verge of extinction So now use gypsum to order tofu instead of brine. Tofu with gypsum is not so fragrant and tastes bad, so it is not recognized by diners and is not easy to sell.

Why do few people make tofu in rural areas now?

Tofu making is an ancient and practical craft. I remember that in the sixties and seventies of last century, tofu was made in our countryside before the Chinese New Year. At that time, making tofu, squeezing oil, making vermicelli, and killing pigs were all necessary jobs prepared before the New Year. Later, these jobs gradually became less and less, especially making tofu. What is the reason? According to my observation, there are mainly the following points:

First, there are few or no raw materials for making tofu. At present, the crops planted in rural areas are mainly grain crops, vegetables and some oil crops, and then fruit trees. There is really little or no soybean (we call it soybean) grown in rural areas. How to make tofu without soybeans as raw materials?

Second, there are fewer craftsmen who make tofu. Although it is not difficult to make tofu, it is still a craft.

As time goes by, people who can make tofu are either old or dead. There are not many people who can make tofu in rural areas now, and young people can hardly make tofu.

Third, people naturally stop making tofu for convenience. Now rural people buy tofu in the market, which is simple, convenient and rich.

Moreover, the population living in rural areas is relatively small, so you can buy a small amount of tofu without making it yourself.

Fourth, people's food is diversified and richer, and tofu is no longer a necessary food. In the past, tofu, eggs, meat, oil and vermicelli were all delicious basic materials to be prepared for the Chinese New Year in rural areas. Now all kinds of food are abundant, and you can buy them as long as you have money. Tofu is just one of them.

According to my observation, due to the above reasons, few people make tofu in rural areas now.

Indeed, there is not much tofu in the countryside now. What is the reason?

Making tofu seems simple, but it is not easy to do. It is no exaggeration to describe it as "it is easier to see flowers than to embroider". My uncle cooks tofu at home. Let me tell you briefly how he did it.

First of all, you should grind the soybeans well in advance. I remember grinding beans with donkeys when I was a child. To be honest, this process is really slow. Fortunately, his family has bought an electric mill now, which is much more convenient.

Because it is a small tofu house in the countryside, no one hires it. Most of them make a fire in the middle of the night. His family has a cauldron about two meters in diameter. To tell the truth, this is the first time I've seen such a big pot. After putting the water away, it takes time to heat the water. We must boil the ground beans and then filter out the dregs. The most important thing is to order tofu. As the saying goes, "Bitter tofu-tofu." What is precipitated is tofu pudding, which is placed on the filter cloth and placed in a square mold. This process seems simple, but it takes a lot of time and energy. This kind of bitterness is not something that ordinary people can eat.

Especially in the northeast of my home, when winter comes, every family will save a few pieces of frozen tofu, so it is easier to buy tofu in winter in rural areas, but my uncle can't do much because he is old, so he just sells about 50 pieces in the village to pay for pocket money.

With the progress of science and technology, many large bean products factories now use gypsum to make tofu, and many processes are operated by machines instead of manual operation. To tell the truth, these things are not bad, and they are basically digested in the city. The traditional skills of small workshops in rural areas are unwilling to do this, but some old people around 50 are struggling to earn some pocket money!

Making tofu in rural areas is hard, and there are few people who can make tofu with traditional techniques. Young people in rural areas will never touch this business!