And Why Tofu Feels Like Their Mozzarella

The first time you notice it, it feels almost suspicious.

Europe has cheese everywhere. France has cheese that smells like a philosophical argument. Switzerland has cheese as infrastructure. Italy has mozzarella, ricotta, parmesan, pecorino — an entire dairy opera.

Then you go to Korea or Japan, two countries with highly developed food cultures, deep fermentation traditions, elegant textures, and almost obsessive attention to detail.

And historically?

Almost no cheese.

This startled me as an originally Korean guy growing up in Germany, where cheese, creme fraiche, sour creme and many milk products are ubiquitary in the cuisine.

In Japan and Korea, you have not no dairy at all. That would be too simple. Japan had some early milk products, and dairy entered court and medical culture long before the modern period. But cheese never became central in the way it did in Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia, or parts of South Asia. Japan and Korea built cuisines around rice, fish, vegetables, seaweed, beans, fermented pastes, broths, pickles, and soy — not milk curds. Japan’s dairy history can be traced back to the Asuka period, but it remained limited and elite rather than becoming everyday food. (j-milk.jp)

So the interesting question is not: “Why didn’t they invent cheese?”

The better question is:

Why would they have needed cheese at all?

Because when you look closer, East Asia did develop something that plays many of the same culinary roles: tofu.

Not cheese chemically. Not cheese biologically. But culturally? Texturally? Nutritionally? In the kitchen?

Tofu is very close to being East Asia’s “other cheese.”

Cheese is what happens when milk becomes civilization

Cheese is not just food. Cheese is a solution.

Imagine you are a herder thousands of years ago. You have goats, sheep, cows, yaks, camels, or mares. They produce milk. That milk is valuable, but it spoils quickly. You cannot carry fresh milk for long. You cannot store it easily. And if many adults around you cannot digest lactose well, fresh milk is also biologically awkward.

Cheese solves several problems at once.

I.t preserves milk.
It concentrates protein and fat.
It travels better than liquid milk.
It reduces lactose.
It turns a fragile animal product into something storable, tradable, and delicious.

That is why cheese appears so naturally in many pastoral societies. If your life revolves around herds, milk is unavoidable. And if milk is unavoidable, fermentation becomes genius.

But Korea and Japan were not built around milk animals in the same way.

They were rice civilizations, not dairy-pastoral civilizations.

Cattle existed, especially as draft animals, but they were not primarily “walking milk machines.” They were labor, wealth, transport, field power. In wet-rice agriculture, an ox pulling a plow may be more valuable than a cow producing milk for human consumption.

Europe looked at a cow and saw milk, butter, cheese, meat, leather, manure, and labor.

Traditional East Asian agriculture often looked at cattle and saw something more specific: field power.

That difference matters.

The geography was different, so the food logic was different

Cheese loves certain conditions.

It loves open grazing land.
It loves herding cultures.
It loves regions where animals can convert grass into calories humans can use.
It loves places where milk is abundant enough that people need to preserve it.

Much of Korea and Japan did not have the same dairy ecology. Japan is mountainous, humid, and densely settled in the arable regions. Korea also developed around grain agriculture, vegetables, seafood, and fermentation rather than large-scale dairying.

In such places, soybeans make more sense.

A soybean field does not need pasture.
A soybean does not need to be milked.
A soybean stores well.
A soybean can become soy sauce, miso, doenjang, tofu, soy milk, yuba, natto, tempeh-like products, and countless regional foods.

In Europe, milk was one of the great protein technologies.

In East Asia, soy was.

That sounds like a modern vegan slogan, but historically it is more practical than ideological. Soybeans were a protein engine. They gave agrarian societies a way to produce dense nutrition without needing a dairy herd.

Biology also played a role: lactose tolerance was not evenly distributed

There is also the body.

Many adults around the world lose much of their ability to digest lactose after childhood. The ability to digest milk comfortably into adulthood — lactase persistence — became common in some populations with strong dairy traditions, especially in parts of Europe and some pastoralist populations. Genetic studies show that lactase persistence increased strongly in Europe after dairying became important, while the same pattern did not spread broadly across East Asia. (PMC)

This does not mean “Asians cannot eat dairy.” That is too crude.

It means that in societies where many adults did not comfortably digest fresh milk, fresh dairy was less likely to become an everyday foundation. Fermentation can reduce lactose, which is one reason yogurt, kefir, and cheese can be tolerated better than milk. But for that to matter culturally, you first need strong milk availability.

East Asia often did not start from “too much milk.”

It started from “we have rice, beans, fish, vegetables, seaweed, and fermentation.”

So the food system went in another direction.

Buddhism influenced the kitchen towards vegetarian/vegan products

Religion also mattered.

Buddhism shaped food culture across East Asia, especially in temple cuisine. Buddhist vegetarian traditions encouraged non-meat protein sources, and tofu became one of the great answers. Tofu spread through East Asia alongside Buddhist food culture and became especially important as a protein-rich food suitable for vegetarian diets. (Wikipedia)

This is where tofu becomes fascinating.

In Europe, monasteries helped preserve and refine cheese-making traditions.

In East Asia, Buddhist temples helped to refine tofu.

Different religious kitchens serving different protein technology.

A European monk might age cheese, a Japanese monk might perfect tofu.

Both are patient, quiet foods in the background, require transformation, and begin with a white liquid. Both depend on coagulation, can be mild, fresh, delicate, or deeply fermented, and can be humble or artisanal.

Just that one begins with animal milk, and the other with plant-based soy milk.

Tofu really is “soy cheese” — but only up to a point

So the first intuition: tofu can feel like mozzarella - is not completely wrong.

This was actually my thought some years ago while trying to produce a Mozarella-like cheese myself from milk.

Fresh tofu is white, mild, soft, slightly springy, and protein-rich. Like fresh mozzarella, it has a clean flavor and absorbs the personality of the dish around it. It does not shout, but listens to its surroundings.

But chemically, tofu and cheese are different.

Cheese is usually made by coagulating milk proteins, especially casein, often with rennet and/or acid, then draining whey and sometimes aging the curds.

Tofu is made by coagulating soy milk proteins, usually with salts such as magnesium chloride, calcium sulfate, or other coagulants, then pressing the curds.

So yes: tofu is not cheese. But structurally, it is doing a similar trick:

Take a protein-rich liquid. Coagulate it. Separate curds. Press into a block. Eat fresh or transform further.

That is why tofu can feel so familiar to someone raised with cheese. It belongs to the same broad human idea: liquid protein made solid.

The difference is that Europe solidified milk, while East Asia solidified soy.

Europe aged cheese. East Asia fermented everything else.

Another reason the “no cheese” question can mislead us is that Korea and Japan were absolutely not lacking fermentation genius.

They simply fermented different things.

Korea developed kimchi, doenjang, ganjang, gochujang, jeotgal, makgeolli, and many regional ferments.

Japan developed miso, soy sauce, sake, mirin, katsuobushi, natto, nukazuke, rice vinegar, and many pickling traditions.

So it is not that East Asia lacked the technological imagination for cheese. Quite the opposite. These cuisines are "fermentation civilizations".

They just did not have milk at the center.

Europe had milk surplus, so it fermented milk.
It might have been coupled with the lack of sunlight compared to Japan or Korea. And the genetic selection towards tolerance of milk in north Europe. Milk provided vitamin D needed in areas with less sun hours and often substituted by consummation of milk products.

East Asia had soybeans, rice, vegetables, seafood, and grains, so it fermented those.

A French cave full of cheese and a Korean jangdokdae full of soybean paste are not opposites. They are cousins. Both are societies saying:

“We have too much of something perishable. Let time, salt, microbes, and technique make it better.”

Why modern Korea and Japan now love cheese

The story changes in modern times.

Today, cheese is everywhere in Korea and Japan. Korean food culture has embraced cheese in a very modern, playful way: cheese tteokbokki, cheese dakgalbi, corn cheese, cheese hot dogs, cheese ramyeon. Japan has cheesecake, cheese tarts, pizza toast, processed cheese snacks, and dairy desserts.

But this is mostly modern, not ancient.

It came through Western influence, industrial food systems, refrigeration, school lunches, global fast food, processed cheese, bakeries, cafés, and changing taste preferences.

Modern cheese in Korea and Japan is often not “old farmhouse cheese culture.” It is more urban, playful, creamy, stretchy, and snackable. Cheese became fun before it became traditional.

That is why Korean cheese dishes often use cheese almost like a texture effect: stretch, melt, soften, enrich, sweeten, balance spice.

Cheese is not replacing tofu.

It is entering a completely different flavor system.

The deeper answer: food cultures solve local problems

So why didn’t Korea and Japan historically have much cheese?

Because cheese was not a universal human destiny. - It was a local solution to local conditions.

You get cheese when several things line up:

animals kept for milk,
enough grazing or dairy infrastructure,
a need to preserve milk,
people who can culturally or biologically tolerate dairy,
and a cuisine that keeps building on that foundation.

In Korea and Japan, different things lined up:

rice agriculture,
soybeans,
seafood,
vegetable fermentation,
Buddhist vegetarian influence,
limited everyday dairying,
and lower historical dependence on milk.

So instead of cheese, they developed tofu.

Instead of butter, they used sesame oil, perilla oil, soybean pastes, fish oils, broths, and later neutral oils.

Instead of milk sauces, they built umami through kelp, bonito, anchovy, soy sauce, miso, doenjang, gochujang, and fermented seafood.

It is not a missing chapter, but simply a different grammar.

Tofu is not fake cheese. Cheese is not superior tofu.

The mistake is to see cheese as the “normal” food and tofu as the substitute.

Historically, that gets it backwards.

Tofu is not an imitation of cheese. It is its own ancient protein technology, with its own elegance. Tofu was recorded in China long before it spread widely through East Asia, and it became deeply embedded in Japanese, Korean, Chinese, and other Asian cuisines. (Wikipedia)

Cheese and tofu are two answers to the same human question:

How do we turn fragile nutrition into something stable, useful, delicious, and culturally meaningful?

Europe answered with milk curds, East Asia answered with soy curds.

One became cheddar, brie, parmesan, feta, raclette, and mozzarella.

The other became silken tofu, firm tofu, fried tofu, yuba, agedashi tofu, dubu-jjigae, mapo tofu, tofu skin, stinky tofu, koya-dofu, and temple cuisine.

Different ingredients using the same intelligence.

The mozzarella moment

So when you taste mild tofu and think, “This is almost like Asian mozzarella,” you are not wrong in some sense. Tofu, however, is not trying to be mozzarella.

Both foods occupy a similar sensory space: white, mild, protein-rich, soft, adaptable, comforting.

Mozzarella says: “Give me tomato, basil, olive oil, salt.”

Tofu says: “Give me soy sauce, ginger, sesame, chili, broth, miso, kimchi, scallion.”

Neither is complete alone. Both are platforms for further tastes.

And maybe that is the most beautiful answer.

Korea and Japan did not lack cheese because their cuisine was less developed. They lacked cheese because their food world had already solved a similar problem differently.

Where Europe had cows and caves, East Asia had soybeans and steam.

Where Europe made milk solid, East Asia made beans tender.

Cheese is milk learning to stay, Tofu is soy learning to become soft.

And both are proof that human beings, given a problem, a humble ingredient and enough time, will eventually turn the problem into culture.