Lion's Head Meatballs 狮子头
Lion's Head Meatballs is featured among the local specialties of Jiangsu.
Lion's Head Meatballs (狮子头) are large, round pork meatballs, a traditional dish of Yangzhou (扬州) and Huaiyang (淮扬) cooking. The Jiangsu Taiwan Affairs Office (江苏省人民政府台湾事务办公室) explains that the name describes the shape, a big round ball likened to a lion's head; Chinese Wikipedia also records the other names sunflower meatballs (葵花肉丸) and Yangzhou zanrou (扬州赞肉).
Where it comes from
A legend retold by the Taiwan Affairs Office has the Sui emperor Yang Guang (杨广) order his cooks in Yangzhou to make dishes after the city's sights, one of them "sunflower chopped meat" (葵花斩肉), named after Sunflower Ridge (葵花岗). In the Tang dynasty, at a banquet given by Wei Zhi (韦陟), Duke of Xun (郇国公), the huge meatball at the centre of the sunflower looked like a lion's head. The guests toasted the duke as a man who deserved a lion seal of command, and he renamed the dish lion's head to mark the occasion. The crab-meat version (蟹粉狮子头) is one of the three dishes of the Yangzhou Three Heads Banquet (扬州三头宴), alongside braised whole pig's head and silver carp head; in January 2018 the Yangzhou Cooking Association demonstrated the banquet's standardised method ahead of a provincial group standard.
How it is made
The Yangzhou standard, as published by Chinese Jiangsu Net (中国江苏网), starts from skinned pork belly with the fat and lean separated. The lean is diced and briefly chopped to a paste, seasoned with salt and ginger-and-scallion juice, stirred in one direction, then mixed with the diced fat and lean and thrown repeatedly into the bowl until it turns sticky. Lake crab meat, pepper and egg white go in next. Each ball has crab roe set into one side and a coat of starch water. The balls are laid in a clay pot lined with pork skin and ribs, with Shaoxing wine, salt, shrimp roe and water, covered with vegetable leaves and simmered over low heat for about three hours.
Flavour and texture
The Taiwan Affairs Office notes that lion's head can be red-braised or cooked clear, and that the clear-stewed version, tender and rich, is better known than the red-braised one; with crab it melts in the mouth. Yangzhou chef Cheng Fayin (程发银) describes meat that is coarsely chopped and finely cut, with golden crab roe inside and small bits of crab that stay springy and chewy.
Sources & reading
Written from the linked sources and fact-checked against them on 2026-09-24. Recipes and servings vary between kitchens.
Image credits & notes (1)
- Shi zi tou, a large braised lion's-head meatball topped with scallions, served at a Yangzhou restaurant · 狮子头，扬州狮子楼所制，葱花点缀的红烧大肉圆Photo: 三猎 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · taken 2016-12-16Resized for the web; the photo itself has not been edited. Thumbnails may show a cropped view.
