Having grown up in a local Japanese household, I thought I had a breadth of knowledge about tofu and other soy products. I was raised on edamame, hard tofu, soft tofu, aburage (deep-fried tofu), miso and okara (soy pulp, strained of soy milk). But it was only after I married into a local Chinese family that I learned of tofu skin, called “yuba” in Japanese and “foo jook” in Chinese.

Tofu skin is made by heating soy milk. As the milk heats, a layer of “skin” solidifies on top of the liquid, the same way the top of a custard or pudding develops a skin. The skin lifted from the pan can be eaten out of hand, but the product is also bunched into sticks and dried, then reconstituted before cooking.

My husband’s aunt uses the dried version, as did his late mother. Sold in packages labeled “dried bean curd,” the product is common in Chinatown markets. Eating my in-laws’ food, I was enraptured by the chew of the reconstituted yuba, sliced into bite-size pieces and turned succulent by whatever delicious sauce it was cooked in.

Like most tofu products, yuba absorbs the flavors of the pot. It’s commonly included in Chinese dishes of jai (monk’s food, served during the Lunar New Year) and spareribs.

THEN I caught wind that Aloha Tofu was producing fresh yuba at its Kalihi factory. I had no idea what a fresh product would be like, so I asked president and owner Paul Uyehara if I could pay a visit.

Uyehara produces 1-by-1-foot sheets of yuba from the factory’s fresh soy milk. He heats the milk in trays that are 1 foot wide and 2 feet long, and when he fishes out the layer of yuba, running a stick under it midway, it doubles over to form a 1-foot-square sheet.

Making yuba isn’t hard, he said, but it’s time-consuming, and he produces it by order only — five sheets minimum, at $12 apiece. (Call Aloha Tofu Factory to place an order.)

That might sound pricey, but it is a handcrafted product. And when you’ve tried fresh yuba, it’s a revelation.

At once chewy and delicate, the product has a tinge of milkiness from the soy milk, with enough body and richness to give it some “weight” without the heaviness of a fatty or oily dish.

Uyehara said in Japan, the most common way to eat yuba is like sashimi. It’s called “yubasashi,” and it’s heavenly dipped in shoyu fortified with wasabi. I enjoyed the simple dish with finely chopped, crunchy fresh lettuce, which provided added texture and another layer of freshness.

When cooled, fresh yuba has some resiliency, so with a careful hand can be used as a wrapper. Uyehara’s kitchen staff produced simple yuba wraps of green onion, and tofu wrapped in both nori and yuba.

The product can also be cooked in sauce and served atop rice for a hearty donburi meal.

WHEN I walked into Uyehara’s kitchen, I expected him to share dishes using his prepared yuba. But here’s the thing: Uyehara is a man with a generous nature. He instead showed me how to make yuba itself, forgoing untold yuba orders.

Fresh yuba, he said, is simple enough to produce in your own kitchen. All you need is a shallow pan and fresh soy milk (the processed kind in cartons won’t solidify, but Aloha Tofu’s fresh product will work) cooked over low heat.

He demonstrated on an induction burner, using a regular frying pan. In fact, he said, in Japan people socialize around such a set-up, fishing out the yuba with chopsticks and eating it directly from the pan.

It looked simple enough, so I bought a couple pints of soy milk from Uyehara and tried my hand at it. He was right — it is easy to make, but it does take time. I used the shallowest pan I had, with the burner set on low, and cooked a pint at a time.

The hardest part of making yuba is having the patience to wait for the skin to develop while also being attentive enough that it doesn’t cook for too long.

The first layer took the longest, about 10 minutes, probably because the pan was still heating up. At this point, it’s good to stir the soy milk around a bit to even out the temperature. When most of the surface was covered with a solidified skin, I ran a chopstick along the side of the pan, then got under the yuba to retrieve it.

After that, with the pan fully heated, subsequent layers took 5 to 7 minutes. I got about six yuba sheets out of a pint of soy milk.

Important to remember: Fan the top of the pan as the skin forms. The cool air above the yuba, combined with the heat below it, helps create a nice, solid piece of skin. I forgot this step, and a few spots of milk in my pan never solidified, making the pieces scraggly and uneven.

Another tip: Stay focused. When I got distracted with washing dishes, I turned to the stove to see the tofu skin overcooked and puffed up into a dome. That sheet of yuba was tougher than the others, but a dip into the milk in the pan hydrated it a bit, and it was as delicious as the rest.

In the end, however uneven, scraggly or overcooked my yuba turned out, it was nothing short of delicious. And for all the great yuba dishes I tried at Aloha Tofu, I’ve found that plain and unadorned — with perhaps a few drops of wasabi-shoyu — is my favorite way to eat it.

I was just about done slicing my yuba when my daughter walked in. I stopped her and popped a piece into her mouth. After that, we didn’t even bother sitting down. We just stood at the counter, grabbing the yuba with our hands and indulging ourselves.

POKING AROUND online, I found a range of recipes using dried yuba, from chicken soup to spareribs to stir-fries.

This recipe is a combination of a few stir-fries, based on what I had in my pantry and fridge.

BRAISED YUBA WITH VEGGIES

By Joleen Oshiro

• 3 sticks dried yuba, available in Asian markets
• 12 pieces dried wood ear fungus
• 1-1/2 tablespoons olive oil
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 (2-inch) piece ginger, peeled and sliced into thin sticks
• 1 tablespoon cooking sherry
• 2 tablespoons shoyu
• 1 to 2 teaspoons sugar
• 1/2 to 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 medium carrot, cut in thin sticks
• 10 string beans, thinly sliced
• 6 stalks green onions, chopped into 1-1/2 inch pieces
• 1 teaspoon sesame oil or aji sesame oil (spicy)

Soak yuba in water to cover, 4 hours to overnight. Drain. Slice into 1-1/2-inch pieces. Soak fungus at least 20 minutes. Drain. Slice into bite-size pieces, removing hard part at center.

In pot over medium-high, heat oil. Add garlic and ginger; cook until fragrant, stirring constantly, 1 to 2 minutes. Do not let garlic burn.

Add yuba and fungus. Stir, then add sherry, shoyu, sugar and salt. Stir and cook a couple minutes.

Add carrots and cook 1 to 2 minutes, then add beans. Cook another 2 or 3 minutes, until veggies are done.

Turn off heat. Add green onions and sesame oil and stir, then serve. Serves 3.

Approximate nutritional information, per serving: 320 calories, 17 g fat, 2.5 g saturated fat, no cholesterol,1,450 mg sodium, 28 g carbohydrate, 15 g fiber, 6 g sugar, 20 g protein.

Is there a cooking technique you’d like explained? Email food editor Joleen Oshiro, joshiro@staradvertiser.com. Nutritional analysis by Joannie Dobbs, Ph.D., C.N.S.