Red Rice Lees Ba-Wan 红糟肉圆

Red Rice Lees Ba-Wan (红糟肉圆) in Hsinchu (新竹) has a red pork filling inside a translucent, chewy wrapper. The colour comes from red lees used to season the pork, together with sugar, soy sauce and finely chopped scallions.

How it is made

The wrappers are made from a mixture of non-glutinous rice slurry, sweet-potato starch and taibai starch (太白粉). These dumplings are smaller than ordinary ba-wan. The filling is enclosed in the rice mixture, then the dumplings are steamed before being fried. Soy sauce and chilli sauce are among the seasonings added after cooking.

How it is eaten

Chinese Wikipedia identifies several places selling the snack around the City God Temple (城隍廟) shopping district. It describes pork-ball soup or thick fish soup as customary accompaniments, chosen to counter the oily impression of the dumplings.