Rubing is a firm white fresh-milk cheese made by the Bai and the Sani Yi dairy peoples of Yunnan, most traditionally from goat's milk and also from cow's milk. Fresh milk is heated and acid-curdled with a sour fruit juice or sour whey rather than rennet; the curd is gathered in cloth, drained, and pressed into a solid block or round — the 'bing' (cake). The block is sliced and most often pan-fried until golden and faintly springy, or steamed, or layered with cured ham. The signature dish is huojia rubing, slices of Yunnan ham steamed sandwiched between slices of the cake. It is eaten with rice as a side or banquet dish, not as a dessert.
Rubing is made by the Bai of Dali and the Sani branch of the Yi around Lunan (today Shilin) in eastern Yunnan — among the few peoples of southern China to develop a mature dairy tradition; historians treat the two groups' cheese as one lineage. Its exact age cannot be fixed, but the technique is old: dairy use among Yunnan peoples is of long standing, and the Republic-era Lunan County Gazetteer records 'rubing, made by acidifying goat's milk, a local specialty… over ten thousand catties exported a year,' confirming a long-standing goat-milk industry. Stockmen in Shilin are documented to have made goat-milk rubing for some three hundred years. The renowned version is the Sani goat-milk cake of Lunan/Shilin, known as Lunan rubing.
A slice of rubing is firm and faintly springy, holding its shape on the knife rather than crumbling like Western fresh cheese. The flavour is milk-forward and clean, with only a slight whey tang at the finish. Pan-fried, the surface browns and the slice firms and bites a little chewy while the inside stays tender — it does not slump or melt away. In huojia rubing, the ham renders its salty fat into the bland cake as it steams, and the two read as one mouthful: rich, savoury, and milky at once. Over-frying dries it hard and bitter; too low a heat leaves it pale and squeaky.
Rubing is acid-set, not rennet-set: fresh milk is heated and an acid — sour fruit juice or sour whey — drops the pH, and the combination of acid and heat (about 70 to 80°C) precipitates the casein into curd, much as soured soy 'milk' sets into tofu, except the protein here is animal casein. The curd is wrapped, drained, and pressed, which expels most of the whey and leaves a dense, low-moisture protein block. That density is why it holds its shape in the pan instead of melting like ricotta or cottage cheese: the casein network is already acid-coagulated and packed tight with little free water, so heat only tightens it further while the surface browns through the Maillard reaction between milk proteins and residual sugars. Rennet cheeses set by enzyme rather than acid and behave differently when heated.
Variations
The most prized rubing is the Sani goat-milk cake of Lunan/Shilin; the Bai of Dali make a cow-milk version, and goat milk is generally held to give the best quality. The everyday treatment is to slice and pan-fry the cake; it is also steamed, deep-fried in a batter, or cut into the ham dish huojia rubing. Its acid-set sibling is rusan (Dali milk fan): both come from one lineage of acid-coagulated fresh milk, but rubing drains and presses the curd into a block while rusan is stretched while warm into thin paper-like sheets wound on a rod.
On the Palate
Where Yunnan Pressed Milk Cake sits in the Chinese flavor cloud
Ingredients
Serves 4How it's made
7 steps · 15 min
- 13 min
Take a block of pressed milk cake (rubing) and cut it into even slices about half a centimetre thick; pat the cut faces dry so they will brown rather than steam.
Watch outPat the cut faces of the milk cake bone-dry — a dry surface browns; a wet one just steams and stays pale.
- 22 min
Cut Yunnan ham into thin slices roughly the same width as the cake slices.
- 32 min
Lay the slices alternately in a heatproof dish, sandwiching each ham slice between two slices of rubing so they overlap in a fan.
- 41 min
Scatter a little ginger and a splash of Shaoxing wine over the top to perfume the dish and temper the saltiness of the ham.
- 510 min
Set the dish in a steamer over rapidly boiling water and steam for about 10 minutes, until the cake is heated through and the ham fat turns translucent.
Watch outSteam about 10 minutes until the ham fat turns translucent — that's the sign the cake is heated through and the flavors have married.
- 64 min
Pour off any excess liquid, or alternatively pan-fry the plain cake slices in oil heated to about 60 percent (medium) until both sides are golden, as a simpler everyday version.
- 71 min
Serve hot, with rice.
