Salted fermented black soybeans, used whole or pasted. Hunan and Cantonese steamers' default umami.
Recorded in the Han-era Shiji (~100 BCE) as 'shi' — one of the oldest documented Chinese ferments. Yongchuan in Chongqing (Mucor-fermented) and Liuyang in Hunan are well-known dry-style sites; Tongchuan in Sichuan and Yangjiang/Luoding in Guangdong are other named-origin producers; Cantonese versions are wetter.
Yongchuan douchi (Chongqing) is the dry, pungent style used in Hunan steamed fish-head dishes; Cantonese 'wet' douchi from Yangjiang is plumper and milder, the kind in steamed spareribs at dim sum.
Black, wrinkled, slightly oily; whole beans give where you bite. Salt-driven up front, then deep soy-savory, then a faint wine-funk tail. Smell is sharper than miso, less sweet — closer to a black olive crossed with soy.
Cooked black soybeans inoculated with Aspergillus, Mucor (Yongchuan's/Sichuan's signature), or bacteria; salted, salted, then sun-aged 3–6 months. Steaming activates the umami: dry beans + 5 minutes over heat = three times the perceived savor of the same beans dropped cold into a wok.
Variations
Yongchuan (Chongqing; dry, Mucor-fermented); Yangjiang (wet, Cantonese steamer style); Liuyang (Hunan; rice-koji/Aspergillus-fermented, used in Hunan steamed dishes and stir-fries with green chili). Laoganma's douchi-chili-oil jar is the supermarket gateway.
On the Palate
Where Douchi sits in the Chinese flavor cloud
Ingredients
Serves 6How it's made
4 steps · 215 days 10 hours waiting
- 1600 min
Soak 1 kg black soybeans 8 hr; steam until tender 2 hr.
Watch outSteam the beans until you can crush one flat between two fingers with no hard core — undercooked beans won't take the mold.
- 27200 min
Cool; inoculate with mold spores (Aspergillus oryzae); ferment 5 days at 30 °C.
Watch outBy day five the beans should be webbed with fuzzy white-to-yellow mold and smell mushroomy-sweet — slimy or off-smelling means it's contaminated, toss it.
- 343200 min
Salt-cure 50 g salt per 500 g; sun-dry 30 days, stirring daily.
Watch outTurn them daily in the sun and keep them dry to the touch — any damp patch left in the pile will spoil sour.
- 4259200 min
Continue aging 6+ months until intensely black and pungent; jar.
