Chaozhou Beef Balls

Chaozhou beef balls are made by pounding fresh beef into a paste by hand and shaping it into balls that are famously bouncy and crisp; they come as pure-beef balls and as tendon balls shot through with sinew.

Chaoshan beef balls are said to derive from Hakka migrants and were refined by the Chaoshan people, once hawked from shoulder-pole stalls along the Han River. In this watery delta the handling and pounding of beef matured into a craft and became a hallmark of Chaozhou cooking.

Most often they are swirled into Chaoshan beef hotpot or dropped into rice-noodle (kway teow) and offal soups, dipped in satay-style sha-cha sauce; street stalls also boil them to order in a clear broth.

Everything rests on the bounce: hand-pounding makes the paste gel until a ball will rebound off the table, splitting open juicy and crisp rather than dry.