Visit the My Hoa tofu craft village

A few years back, the My Hoa tofu craft village (Binh Minh town, Vinh Long province) was still brilliantly yellow. People dedicated to preserving the old profession, over the past hundred years, have made up the identity of this country.
Although it is not currently the peak season for tofu production, the furnace of Uncle Dinh Cong Hoang (Ba Hoang, living in My Khanh 1 hamlet, My Hoa commune) is still red every day. The cook stood in the kitchen constantly to keep up with the new batches of new products. Uncle Ba Hoang is one of the households working in this village for many years. Since 2010, the My Hoa Tofu Cooperative (Cooperative) was established. Uncle Ba has been assigned the task of the Chairman of the cooperative until now.

Ms. Ngoc Giau picked up the tofu tofu from the cooking pan. Uncle Ba Hoang said, the cooperative currently has 38 members, producing tofu with a medium and large scale. Particularly with his oven has a scale of up to 180 pans, an average of 300kg-500kg of tofu ships can be produced per day. Smaller ovens range in production from more than a dozen pans to a few dozen cooking pans. Thanks to this job, people set up a career right in their homeland and help solve the rural labor force with stages such as cooking, transporting, drying … We went to My Hung 1 hamlet, My Hoa commune, where there are quite a few people making tofu but with a smaller scale. Ms. Nguyen Ngoc Giau and her husband are standing cooking 18 tofu pans. Giau said this profession is “hereditary” and that she and her husband chose to establish a career over the past 20 years. Tofu and tofu of Mrs. Giau and her husband do not sell enough, mainly in the market in Tra Vinh province. “This job is not heavy, but it has a constant job, since the chickens have not crowed. Having a regular income, staying at home, having time to care for the family and cultivating to earn more ”- Mrs. Giau said. Go to the house of Uncle Nguyen Van Hai, Giau’s biological father, to hear him talk about the traditional profession. Uncle Hai said that this profession must be present for over 100 years in My Hoa, he is also “inherited from his father”, but now he is very old, so he no longer cooks but passes on to his children. At that time, Uncle Hai said, when we went to that time, when I heard that My Hoa hometown, people mentioned Nam Roi pomelo and tofu tofu. Particularly tofu in My Hoa has been famous for a long time, everyone praised it delicious. According to Uncle Hai, although the tofu cooking profession is not difficult to do, but it takes patience and hard work because if an average of 18 cooking pans is taken, a cooking shift takes more than 20 hours to complete. That is not to mention the high season such as the big full moon day of the year, the traditional New Year …, the capacity must increase. Uncle Dinh Cong Hoang said: Thanks to the reputation, My Hoa tofu is very easy to consume in the markets of the Mekong Delta cities and provinces, especially Can Tho, Vinh Long, and Tra Vinh. However, the current difficulty is that the price of soybean ingredients used to cook tofu tofu is soaring, around 17,000 VND / kg that the profit is low, although the current tofu has increased by about 92,000 VND / kg (selling price at oven). Normally, for every 90kg of raw soybeans, 35kg-38kg of finished products are produced. “If any batch of raw soybeans are imported, which are young beans, cooked without scum to salvage tofu, the risk of breaking the tofu or even loss is high” – Uncle Ba Hoang shared. However, most people think “take the credit”, so everyone is enthusiastic about keeping the traditional profession of the homeland. Tofu tofu is also known as phuoc (the sound camp from Sino-Vietnamese) or scum, because this product is made from picking up soybean scum on a cooking pan. The way to make tofu tofu is also quite simple: soak soybeans, peel the skin clean and then grind it, and cook it on a large pan. Cook until a while, the bean paste will gather on the surface, the cook will pick it up and hang it on the pole right above the pan to dry. The trend of vegetarian cuisine is increasingly popular, so tofu tofu is also “crowned” because it is easy to eat, can process many dishes, from soup, stir-fry to warehouse, rolls … Tofu is also used to cook savory dishes such as isle, la-gu, curry … Thanks to the variety of cuisine of tofu, the product is selling very well. The view of a tofu cooking oven is very beautiful, and is loved by photographers. But if you try to stand in the cooking pan, you can see that the hot temperature makes the cook easily tired and sweat a lot if you are not used to it. Yet the professors feel normal and remember when the stove stopped setting the fire.