Clay Pot Lion's Head Meatballs 砂锅狮子头

How it is made

The Guangming Daily (光明日报) sets out three rules for the Yangzhou version. First, the meat is cut, not minced: sliced finely, then chopped coarsely (细切粗斩). Second, the cut is pork belly or hind leg, traditionally six parts fat to four parts lean, though a half-and-half mix is now usual because the old version came to seem too greasy. Third is the handwork: the meat is mixed with salt, a little Shaoxing wine and spring onion and ginger juice, then stirred and slapped until it turns sticky.

A little starch goes into the mixture, and wet starch is smeared on the palms so that each ball rolls out smooth. The balls are poached in boiling water, lifted into a clay pot, covered with green vegetable leaves and stewed over a low flame for two hours; the longer they stew, the more tender they become.

Ingredients

Yangzhou changes the additions with the season: freshwater mussels when they come to market, wind-dried chicken in winter, and crab in autumn. For crab-meat lion's head (蟹粉狮子头), crab meat is mixed into the pork and crab roe is pressed into the top of each ball, which is set roe side up; the broth comes out clear with a light yellow tint. Chinese Wikipedia also lists water chestnut and shrimp paste among the additions.

Where it comes from

Xu Ke's (徐珂) collection Qing Bai Lei Chao (清稗类钞) explains that lion's head is a pork ball named for its shape, and the writer Liang Shiqiu (梁实秋) added that it is also fairly large. It is also called 'chopped meat' (斩肉) and 'sunflower chopped meat' (葵花斩肉); legend says Emperor Yang of Sui (隋炀帝) had four dishes made on the theme of four Yangzhou sights, one of them Sunflower Ridge (葵花岗).

Besides clear stewing, the balls can be steamed or red-braised; for the braised version they are first fried until a crust forms, then cooked with soy sauce. Yu Xuerong (于学荣) of the Jiangsu Catering Industry Association says the clay-pot dish is made both clear-stewed and red-braised, with different methods in different parts of the province.