Lion’s Head Meatballs in Clear Broth (Shi Zi Tou)

Grind pork. Slice chock pork to large slices. Cut slices into strips, then to small pieces.

Gather meat in a pale rapidly chop from left to right or vice versa, until it’s done with the way you like.

In a large mixing bowl, combine meat, ginger, green onion, salt, pepper, sugar, and Shaoxing wine.

Gradually add a small amount of water to the mixture while mixing it using your hand. Add about ⅓ cup of starch and water mixture to the mixture.

Take a hang full of mixture in one hand, slam it to another hand, and repeat this several times to make water seep into meat and form a meatball. Repeat this till whole mixture is done.

In a large cooking pot, add chicken broth, and drop in meatballs.

And cover meatballs with Napa cabbage leaves to prevent meatball they raise above broth and to remove grease.

Bring to boil, lower the heat, and simmer for 4 hours.

Take out cabbages, and add in Bok Choy.

Enjoy!

It’s important to choose your pork belly carefully—in the winter, the ideal ratio is 60% lean to 40% fat, while in the summer we look for a 70 to 30 lean-to-fat ratio. Chef John: “We have a saying in Chinese cuisine: ‘There’s nothing more delicious than meat that’s been cut a thousand times.’ When mincing by hand, we want each morsel of meat to be about the size of a rice grain. We also want to maintain enough space between those grains of meat for pockets of jus to accumulate during the cooking process. Mince too coarsely or too finely, and the meat won’t be supple enough.”