Belonging to Datong, Shanxi Province, Guangling County, located in the northeast border of the Three Jins, adjacent to Wei County of Hebei Province in the east, bordering Lingqiu County in the south, Hunyuan County in the west, and Yangyuan in Hebei in the north, this City-state of Zhao known as Pingshuyi in the Warring States Period has endured thousands of years of wind and rain until today, and can also be regarded as a long history. Since it is an ancient city, the food culture is naturally rich and varied, in addition to spiced donkey meat and black goat, the most talked about in the area is the traditional famous dried five-spiced tofu.
The main ingredient of Guangling spiced dried tofu is produced in the selected beans in the alpine mountains of the county at an altitude of 1400 meters, and strives to be full and round, filtered by the water of the pot stream with excellent water quality, and then go through multiple processes such as making, pressing, drying, and cooking. Peel and crush the beans until ground out. This soybean milk with a strong bean flavor is boiled in a pot, foamed with lime water and sesame oil soup, then aged and juiced, and finally put into a mold to squeeze out the excess juice, so that the dried tofu made in the traditional method is freshly baked.
After the dried tofu is formed, it will be cut into tofu strips by the old craftsmen according to different specifications, and then placed in the hot sun to dry, after meeting the production standards, and then rinsed with warm water, the most critical and important process - brine boiling, with the fine salt, fennel, peppercorns, large ingredients, ginger and many other seasonings into the pot, the original dull dried tofu with the tumbling soup, in the sinking floating gradually presented the unique local flavor of Guangling.
After the pot, the five-spiced dried tofu is white and yellow, the aroma overflows, and the entrance is mellow and delicious. In addition to the brine method, Guangling dried tofu can also be smoked, that is, smoked with pine branches or sawdust, and the finished product is more chewy and more flavorful, which is the so-called smoking. The salty dried boiled out of the brine has been divided into two categories: dried tofu and tofu tendon in the long-term development and inheritance.
For Guangling, whether it is smoked and dried salted tofu dried tofu tendons, it is a very common local feature in Guangling Datong and even in Shanxi, in these places, whether it is marriage and funeral, whether it is to invite relatives and friends, it is an indispensable wine and food on the table at the banquet. In 2001, it was this Guangling dried tofu with a history of more than 100 years that won the gold medal of the China International Agricultural Exposition, and in 2002, it passed the green food certification, and truly became the city business card of Guangling.