Rice Cooker Fu Chuk Recipe (腐竹糖水 fu chuk tong sui)

This super easy rice cooker fu chuk comes together in one pot, and can even be partially made overnight if your rice cooker has a 'keep warm' function.

Fu chuk is a Cantonese dessert and a tong sui ('sweet soup'). It's named after the 'fu chuk' itself – the dried bean curd sheets. These are paper-thin sheets of tofu skin, sometimes also known as yuba.

There are two kinds of dried bean curd sheet that fu chuk tong sui can be made with: the kind that doesn't dissolve, and the kind that does. The latter kind dissolves almost completely back into soy milk when boiled in water, and it's pretty much impossible to find in the UK (at least at the time of writing it). But both kinds are made in the exact same way.

Since I use the type of bean curd sheet that doesn't dissolve, I like to add evaporated milk to replace the creamy element that's lost without the bean curd being able to dissolve. This is optional though, and some fu chuk recipes with non-dissolving bean curd skin don't add any milk element at all, creating a clear soup.

Most people familiar with ginkgo nuts know that they're actually toxic and that you're not meant to eat a large number of them in a day, or you'll get an upset stomach. But don't worry – you have to eat quite a few to feel ill effects. In any case, it's recommended that an adult eats no more than 8–10 whole nuts a day, and some sources say no more than 10–40. Since the number varies so much and seems to also depend on how your body processes things, I stick to 8–10. Ginkgo nuts are quite rich and filling anyway, so it's difficult to accidentally eat a lot of them (although it does apparently occasionally happen).

You can also watch me make this on my YouTube channel, Tashcakes:

Ready? Let's go.

Ingredients:

170g dried bean curd sheets
80g ginkgo nuts
Large handful of job's tears or barley, rinsed
1/3 can evaporated milk
Yellow rock sugar, to taste

Method:

1. Break the dried bean curd sheets into smaller pieces by crushing them in the bag, then open the bag and empty into a large bowl of water. Cover with cold water and leave to soak for half an hour.

2. Rinse the job's tears or barley in a sieve under the tap, and place in another small bowl of cold water to soak for at least two hours (I do this while the bean curd sheets are cooking, or overnight).

3. Drain the water and add the soaked bean curd sheets to the rice cooker bowl. Add about 2 litres of fresh water, close the lid, and set the cooker to 'soup' mode for two hours (I often let my rice cooker cook and keep it warm overnight).

4. Split the ginkgo nuts open (either by slicing them completely in half or just partially slicing through them) and scrape out the bitter sprouts inside, discarding them. Place in a small bowl of cold water to reduce any residual bitterness, rinsing them with the water and then draining the water. 

5.  Open the rice cooker and give the contents a stir, breaking up the now soft bean curd sheets up with a spoon. Then drain your job's tears/barley and add it and the ginkgo nuts, along with the evaporated milk and sugar.

6. Close the rice cooker and set the rice cooker to 'soup' mode again for one more hour, and serve the fu chuk hot.

Enjoy, and have fun.