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Soy and legumes from Northern China

Tan-shih / kan-shih (salt-free soy nuggets, historical China)淡豉

Salt-free shih were whole soybeans cooked, heaped in a warm, sealed room until a white and then a yellow mould coat grew, washed clean, and packed into a chaff-lined pit to ferment. The 6th century Qimin Yaoshu gives the method with no salt at all; the later Bencao Gangmu calls the unsalted kind 淡豉 (tan-shih) and gives its own sun-and-jar method. This is a text-only reconstruction from historical sources.

Fully documentedSoy and legumes13 days – 18 days

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedAmounts are the Qimin Yaoshu's own, in Northern Wei measures. A three-room house makes 100 shi (石) of beans, in heaps of 20 shi; a heap smaller than 10 shi will not keep itself warm.
SoybeansOld beans are best; new beans are still damp and cook unevenly[qmys-ws]
Grain chaff (穀蘵)To line and cover the fermenting pit[qmys-ws]
Millet straw (黍穄穰)Wetted with hot water to cover the heaps in cold weather[qmys-ws]
No saltThe Qimin Yaoshu method adds nothing to the beans[qmys-ws]

Total time across the recorded steps: 13 days – 18 days

Start
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What changes: Soybeans boil until they are soft enough to pinch through

Step 1 of 6
Boil the beans until soft and spread them to cool
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Moulds

Overcooked beans turn the shih mushy. In winter the beans are spread slightly warm, in summer fully cold. Output: cooked beans.

Flavour
Not documented
Texture
soft enough to pinch through
Colour
Not documented

Microbes at work in this step

Not documented for this step.

Method

Measured measured in a studySet fixed by a specification or tested recipeReported one source reports itTypical a general value, not sourced for this fermentUnconfirmed not yet checked against a source

At a glance

Salt-free shih were whole soybeans cooked, heaped in a warm, sealed room until a white and then a yellow mould coat grew, washed clean, and packed into a chaff-lined pit to ferment. The 6th century Qimin Yaoshu gives the method with no salt at all; the later Bencao Gangmu calls the unsalted kind 淡豉 (tan-shih) and gives its own sun-and-jar method. This is a text-only reconstruction from historical sources. Made in 6 steps over 13 days – 18 days. The longest step, pack into a chaff-lined pit to ferment, takes 10–15 days (Jia Sixie 2026).

Key numbers
Main step10–15 daysReported[qmys-ws]Pack into a chaff-lined pit to ferment

What makes this one different

Unlike salted douchi and hamanatto, nothing goes into the beans but water. The Qimin Yaoshu ferments them in a pit inside a warm, half-sunk room, with the heat of the heap itself managed by turning.

Related ferments

Variants

  • Bencao Gangmu salt-free shih (造淡豉法)Steamed beans spread on a mat and covered with artemisia, then sun-dried and winnowed, wetted until juice runs between the fingers, packed in a jar under mulberry leaves 3 cun thick, mud-sealed and sunned 7 days; wetting and sunning are repeated 7 times, then the beans are steamed again.
  • Shijing method (《食經》作豉法)Quoted in the same Qimin Yaoshu chapter; adds 5 sheng each of glutinous-millet qu and salt per shi of beans and seals them in a jar for 27 days, so it is a salted shih.

Safety

The Qimin Yaoshu calls shih easy to spoil. A heap that overheats rots into a foul mush that even pigs and dogs refuse, one kept too cold tastes poor, beans that are not washed clean turn bitter, and beans left too long in the pit turn bitter. These are the book's quality warnings, not safety data [qmys-ws]. Treat this as history, not a method to follow. A study of botulism outbreaks in China says home soybean ferments kept warm in airtight containers likely let the toxin form [li2022bot], and salt-free beans packed tight in a warm pit have no salt to hold it back.

History and sources

Every number is labelled with how it is known. How this atlas is made

The Qimin Yaoshu (c. 535), chapter 72, gives the warm-room method. An eighth-century Tang materia medica says the salt-free soy nugget sauce of Shenchou in Henan kept for many years but was not recommended for medicine (Shurtleff and Aoyagi). In 754 the monk Ganjin (Jianzhen) is recorded as bringing salt-free soy nuggets (kan-shih) to Japan (Shurtleff and Aoyagi).

Starter
The sources we found do not say how its fermentation begins.
Microbes
No study we found names its microbes.
Temperature, salt and pH
The sources we found give no temperature, salt or pH figure for any of its steps.
  1. [li2022bot] Li H., Guo Y., Tian T. et al. (Fu P.) 2022, Epidemiological analysis of foodborne botulism outbreaks, China, 2004–2020, China CDC Weeklypaper
  2. [qmys-ws] Jia Sixie, Qimin Yaoshu (c. 535), vol. 8, ch. 72 作豉法 (main method and the Shijing method); Chinese text on Wikisource (齊民要術/卷第八), read 2026-10archive
  3. [bcgm-ws] Li Shizhen, Bencao Gangmu (1578), 穀之四, 大豆豉 entry with 造淡豉法; Chinese text on Wikisource (本草綱目/穀之四), read 2026-10archive
  4. [SIC-nuggets] Shurtleff W., Aoyagi A., History of Soy Nuggets (Shih, Douchi, Hamanatto), SoyInfo Centerbook