Delicious chaoshan beef meatballs

Chaoshan Niurouwan

Chaoshan Niurouwan
Ball Dish | Chaoshan Cuisine
traditional

Chaoshan beef meatballs are hand-pounded beef balls with extraordinary elasticity and a juicy, meaty flavor. Often called the most famous meatballs in China.

Ingredients

Instructions

  1. 1. Slice the beef against the grain, add cooking wine, soy sauce and starch, mix well and marinate for 15 minutes
  2. 2. Pour an appropriate amount of cooking oil into the pot and heat it over high heat until it is 70% hot.
  3. 3. Add beef and stir-fry quickly over high heat until it changes color.
  4. 4. Add onions and ginger and continue to stir-fry until cooked through
  5. 5. Add appropriate amount of salt and a little soy sauce to enhance the freshness, stir-fry over high heat and serve evenly.
  6. 6. Remove from the pan and serve on a plate

Cultural Notes

Chaoshan beef meatballs are perhaps the most celebrated single dish of Chaoshan cuisine. The hand-pounding technique using twin cleavers (shuangdao chengrang) is a performance art in itself — skilled practitioners pound at a rate of several hundred strikes per minute, creating a rhythmic clattering sound that echoes through Chaoshan streets. The resulting meatballs are so bouncy that they are often used as a comedy prop (bouncing off the table). This dish was featured in the popular Chinese film "Chaoshan Beef Meatball" and has become a symbol of Chaoshan food culture.