To provide a new method for producing fried bean curd, capable of surely producing the delicious fried bean curd in which a flavor and a crisp texture of the fried bean curd itself, a nice-smelling fragrance due to melanoidine reaction of a bean protein, and a perfume inherent in a frying oil are properly harmonized, and to provide a production apparatus helpful for effectively conducting the method.

In this method, a frying treatment tank which is equipped with a preliminarily heating zone for raising a temperature of water contained in raw bean curd up to a range near a boiling point thereof, so as to expand a volume of the raw bean curd without hardening a surface of the raw bean curd, a low-temperature heating zone having a temperature of the frying oil for forming a dehydrated film on the surface of the preliminarily heated bean curd, a middle-temperature heating zone having a temperature of the frying oil higher than that of the low-temperature heating zone, so as to dehydrate the inside of the low-temperature heated bean curd and to form air bubbles inside the curd, and a high-temperature heating zone having a temperature of the frying oil higher than that of the middle-temperature heating zone, so as to change a color of the dehydrated film on the middle-temperature heated bean curd into an approximately golden brown color and to initiate the melanoidine reaction is structured as a means for conducting frying treatment by laying far-infrared radiation weights on the bean curd. Further, the method carries out processes for sequentially dipping the bean curd in the frying oil existing in each of the heating zones of the treatment tank in a shallow dip state. The production apparatus is used as a structural means of the method.