cantonese steamed beef meatballs

This is something that I have not try to make until now. Here in Portland there is no dim sum place that I care for. The closest acceptable dim sum I have to drive to Seattle, or better Richmond, BC. So short of taking a road trip, I have to take matter into my own hands if I want edible dim sum.
The problem is dim sum is all about small dishes of culinary delight and typically you eat a few different ones. It is really not practical to make at home so you have a variety of different dishes. Today I decided to just make one - steamed beef balls. As it is my first try and I made up the recipe on the fly, based on a vague idea that I have of the ingredients and process. I knew I need some pork fat, so I bought a few pieces of pork butt planning on trimming out the fat to use. It turned out the fat on the pork butt already been trimmed off, so no go there.

I decided to take a trip to Win Co to get some wild shrimps and try find a bit of pork fat. That turned out to be a wasted trip, except I came home with 2 pounds of Gulf shrimps.

I bought a piece of rump roast

I used a meat grinder using a medium grinding die as I like to have some texture

to achieve the bouncy and fluffy mouth feel you have to work the ground meat until it becomes a gluey thick paste consistency

aged Chinese tangerine peels - I only use half of this

There are a lot more than what first meet the eyes in what are in the steamed beef meatballs. The primary ingredients that make these meatballs unique including aged tangerine (Mandarin orange) peel, chopped cilantro, grated ginger, chopped scallions, finely ground white pepper corns, and glutinous rice flour, to name a few. I identified most of the ingredients purely by taste. Additionally one add quite a bit of water to the ground meat, and work the mixture into gluey paste. To substitute for pork fat I mixed in some measure of extra virgin olive oil. Thankfully the oil didn't break up the gluey paste consistency that is need to bind the meatball together.

As I made this by the seat of the pants I determining how much seasoning to add was challenging.  I estimated it, and made a couple of small test samples to check.

I was afraid of adding too much chopped cilantro could lose the gluey consistency of the meat paste, and the meatball can fall apart during steaming. I also added some chopped apple to substitute for water chestnut which is difficult to find unless you settle for canned ones.

traditionally the beef meatballs are lined with a piece or two of soy milk skin

 hydrating the soy milk skins

the second sample, this time lined with a piece of soy milk skin, that I made and this turns out good

One thing that I immediately notice is my meatball is dark instead of being pinky red inside. This is due to I didn't use any curing salt. Thanks to the olive oil and apple the meatball does not taste dry and is fluffy and tender. The entire process took about 5 hours with about 1.5 hours of work. You can see this is something that you want to make a big batch to spread the labor. This is also the prime reason that more often than not, dim sum restaurants in the West just use frozen factory made dim sum, instead having a crew of dim sum chefs. I estimate this batch would result in about 10 servings of two big meatballs each.

this is a mini size third test sample ready for steaming (about 5 minute due to its small size); I am not making a pair of full size ones as I had dinner already

there is the unmistakable fragrance of the cilantro and aged tangerine peels; the result of my first attempt did not disappoint