Chinese Recipe Lion Head Meatball Soup (清燉獅子頭，清炖狮子头)

Ingredients:
Pork belly meat, 1 lb (for two persons)
Lotus root (only need 1/10 of the meat volume)
Shanghai baby boy choy (can be replaced with Napa cabbage)
Salt
Black pepper powder
Ginger
green onion
Corn starch

Lion head meatballs (獅子頭, 狮子头) are common and famous among Southern Chinese recipes. There are two main approaches. One is called braised Lion head meatballs (紅燒獅子頭，红烧狮子头)which come with deep color appearance and rich flavor but no soup; the other one called lion head meatball soup which has delicate flavor with clear soup. Today I am going to show you how to make lion head meatball soup (清燉獅子頭，清炖狮子头). The recipe is simple but it takes about 2 hours to make. But you will really enjoy the final product!

Step 1: mince the pork belly meat.

I use 1 lb here to make four jumbo meatballs for a 2-person meal. But you can double or triple the quantity if you want. The process is the same. First chop them up into small tiny pieces. This requires some efforts. You can use a cleaver to make chopping and mincing easier. Why manually chopping meat instead of grounding with a mixer? Well the manual chopping and mincing will give a unique texture with fine but still tiny bit of chunky pieces, while mixer grounding will lose this texture with constant meat paste. However grounding meat with a mixer is still a viable approach if you choose to be lazy! Set aside of the minced meat into a large bowl.

Step 2: mince lotus root

You can usually buy a small bit of lotus root from Asian grocery stores. Minced lotus root adds crunchiness into the meatballs and enhance its unique texture and flavor. You can chop and mince it like this into fine pieces.

Step 3: make green onion and ginger juice

Slice ginger into thin pieces and green onions into small segments. Then try mash them in a small bowl with tiny amount of water to produce some juice of green onion and ginger.

Step 4: mix and prepare the meat with ingredients.

Now add proper amount of salt, ground black pepper, corn starch, green onion and ginger juice into the meat, and mix them up with a clean hand. Add a tiny amount of water, followed by hand mixing for a minute. Repeat this three or four times so water is evenly squeezed and sealed into the meat.

Now comes the fun part: you grab a portion of the meat and smash it against the inner wall of the bowl. You keep doing this for a couple minutes. This process is important for the meat to stick together better and also get tenderized a bit.

At last, add in lotus root minces, give a brief hand mixing and smashing.

Step 5: prepare starch water
Mix some corn starch into water in another small bowl for later use.

Step 6: Now cooking time!

Prepare two soup pots and add in enough water and bring them to boil. Here I use a wok and a clay soup pot.
Grab equal portion of meat into one hand and swiftly change hand to make it into a jumbo Lion Head meatball. Sprinkle some starch water as you make it, which helps forming the meatballs and sealing flavor and water in the meatballs. Then slowly add into boiling water in the wok. Now gently rotate the meatballs so they stay round while solidifying their shape.

After two or three minutes, now gently move the meatballs to the clay pot. Add in salt, ginger and green onion leftover from previous juicing bowl. Cover with the lid and slow cooking for 90 minutes over low heat. Make sure the heat is low enough so very little steaming comes out from the soup pot, but big enough so the soup is always in a mild rolling boiling state.

While waiting for the soup, we will prepare Shanghai baby bok choy by washing them clean.

When time is up, add in Shanghai baby boy choy into the soup and give another few minutes, then remove the soup into a big soup bowl.
Now enjoy your fresh Lion Head meatball soup!

Please comment below how you like this recipe and whether you would do it differently. Thanks for watching Lu Cookbook!