chiuchow beef meat balls 潮州牛丸 - part 1

Among the Chinese food that I miss the most are good Chiuchow beef meatballs 潮州牛丸 and fish balls 魚蛋. Here in the Pacific Northwest there is no place that you can find them. In fact to me, there is no decent Chinese restaurants. So for me the only way to crunch my cravings is to take matter into my own hands.


Recently I decided to try my hands in making my own beef meat balls. Good Chiuchow beef meat balls are flavorful and toothsome. That is toothsome in a way rubbery and is bouncy. While I can buy them in an Asian supermarket in town I dislike that they are full of MSG. Additionally it has come to my attention that to achieve the rubbery and bouncy mouthfeel it is very likely chemical like borax is used. Hence I decided to try making them myself.

I selected a fine die to use with this manual meat grinder; it was quite an exercise to hand grind 5.5 pound of beef using a find grinder die

It was quite an exercise in hand-grinding 5.5 pounds of beef

The next step is to season the ground beef and then work it into an emulsion; I agonized which attachment to use; I thought the cake mixer paddle on the left would work well but it would turn out to be wrong

after many minutes of mixing the beef begun to become sticky; you want it to develop the stickiness so you can form a ball and hopefully the end result is bouncy and tasty beef meat balls

I made two to test the seasoning as well as the mouth feel

depends on the size, they take about 5 to 7 minutes to cooked through

next step is to shock them in ice water to cool them

I cut one open to check the doneness as well as the texture

fortunately I tested them first; they lack in the toothsomeness as well as being a bit dry; so I added 2 eggs, and then slowly add in about 4 tablespoons of fats rendered from cow bone marrow; I also found them to be too blend and in need of slightly more saltiness

the mixer getting quite a workout - I mixed only about 2 3/4 pound of the ground beef at a time as that is all the mixer bowl could accommodate

I would realize the bread dough hook works much better then the cake paddle; it mixes much better in that the ground beef mixes much more thoroughly due to the design of the dough hook; the machine also does not have to work as hard

while it is prefer to use only egg white, being frugal I threw in the yoke too; the eggs help to bind the beef and achieve a bouncy consistency

a photo shot of the intermediate step; it still has a long way to go in mixing before an emulsion is achieved; it would be soon that I realize that the dough hook works much better over the cake paddle

making these beef meat balls is amazingly similar to making German weisswurst in which you turn the ground meat into an emulsion

fortunately I have a real mixer as doing it in a food-processor would certainly abusing it

here is 4.5 pounds of beef emulsion ready to be formed into meat balls; notice the color is whiter when an emulsion is reached

 actually I put it into the refrigerator for an hour or so to let it rest

the homemade beef meat balls are pale compared to the storebought ones that has food coloring

forming the meatball is done by using the palm to squeeze the mixture and form a ball; then using a wet metal spoon to scoop it off the hand into a pot of hot water

The technique of forming a meat ball with my hand is something that I observed when I was around 12 years old walking to school. I would watch with fascination the Chiuchow man making a big wooden tub of these beef meat balls. They didn't use any machinery and every step is done by hand. These images etched in my memory and I can recall vividly today. To form a round ball with the smooth texture I slight turn the ball as it form with my thumb and index finger while squeezing out the meat. Once the ball is the intended size, I scoop it off at the base with a spoon wet with water and transfer it to hot water to blanch. The blanching fixes the meat ball as well as cooks it through.

depends on the size of the ball, they take about 5 - 7 minutes to cook (by blanching in sub-boiling water)

as with making sausage and ground meat like sausage it is a messy business; it is best to make a big batch to minimize unavoidable process waste

I ended up with two trays of beef balls

next I package them into vacuum packs, each for two servings

I stored the vacuum-packed beef meat balls in the freezer but kept 2 servings to make beef ball soup noodles. In retrospect I would add some dark soy sauce next time to darken the color of the meat balls to improve the appearance. The two eggs help to make the meat balls reach the bouncy rubbery consistency that I was hoping to achieve, without the need of harmful chemical. There is no MSG used. One key is the size of the balls. You don't want to make them too small as the flavor would be lost when you blanch them. You also don't want them to be too big so it is a fine balance. Mine are just slightly larger than 1 inch in diameter.

A bit of math. This batch of 5.5 pound of beef yielded about 27 serving, each with 4 and some 5 meat balls. That works out to about 3.3 ounce of beef per serving. I packed 8 to 10 meat balls into each vacuum pack to maximize the utility of the vacuum bags. Actually I managed to turn each 8" x 12" bag into two. Cheap skate!

Here is one quick beef soup rice noodle made with the meatballs:

step 1: blanch some Thai rice noodles

step 2: heat up some beef broth and daikon together with 4 beef meatballs and a few slices of slow braised brisket

all assembled and served with homemade chili-oil

here you can see the cross-section of a meatball

here are the store bought ones in my recent post - these are jumbo size which I quarter each into 4 pieces; they are very tasty because there is a lot of MSG

I am extremely pleased with the result of this first batch. As always with cooking I would modify the techniques and ingredients. I would try different cuts of beef, and different fat ratio, the amount of eggs, as well as water in forming the desired texture and mouth feel. I especially like the meatballs with beef tendon, though it requires a few more steps. Beef tendons used to be very affordable not these days, they cost as much as mid range cuts of beef.

I recently happen to purchase a box of borax for the first time. I was researching online as how to launder body oil from cotton fabric. Borax is used in food preparation in some countries, but is illegal in North America because it is a known carcinogen. I did not use any in making my beef meatballs. Borax is used to achieve a bouncy rubbery consistence in food.

a box of borax

i love the old fashion photo

I visited Death Valley and this is a borax transport steam locomotive; they also have a lot of photos of the mule teams; these poor mules that lived a life of misery