Poyang Lake Lion's Head Meatballs 鄱阳湖狮子头
Poyang Lake Lion's Head Meatballs is featured among the local specialties of Jiangxi.
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Poyang Lake Lion's Head Meatballs (鄱阳湖狮子头) are a Nanchang (南昌) dish with soft, savoury meatballs. In the Jiangxi provincial government recipe republished by China National Radio, each meatball encloses a salted egg yolk.
Ingredients
Pork is chopped into rice-sized pieces, while shredded taro is salted until softened. These are mixed with chopped water chestnuts and ham, shredded dried scallops, minced ginger and egg. Dry starch, salt, soy sauce and pepper are beaten into the mixture before it is divided and wrapped around the yolks.
How it is made
The meatballs are fried until golden, then placed in stock reaching their tops. Salt, cooking wine, soy sauce, tied spring onions and shredded ginger are added before about two hours of steaming, until the meatballs are very tender.
Cooked greens is arranged on a shallow serving dish beneath the meatballs. Their cooking juices are thickened with a starch slurry, finished with oil and poured over the top.
Sources & reading
Written from the linked sources and fact-checked against them on 2026-09-27. Recipes and servings vary between kitchens.