Shuili Ba-Wan Dumplings 水里肉圆
Shuili Ba-Wan Dumplings is featured among the local specialties of Taiwan.
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Shuili Ba-Wan Dumplings (水里肉圆) are the ba-wan of Shuili Township (水里乡) in Nantou County (南投县), central Taiwan. Ba-wan (肉圆) is a Taiwanese street snack: usually a flat, round, semi-translucent parcel six to eight centimetres across, with a pork filling. Chinese Wikipedia lists the Shuili and Puli (埔里) versions among the best-known Nantou styles, and names the Dong Family Three Brothers' Ba-wan (董家三兄弟肉圆) in Shuili among the best-known shops.
How it is made
Taiwanese ba-wan wrappers are made from sweet potato starch, potato starch, indica rice flour or tapioca starch, and the filling is mainly pork. At the Dong family shops the balls are cooked in a pot of oil; a 2012 TVBS News report shows the cook lifting them out, cutting the wrapper open and pouring the shop's own sauce over it.
How it is eaten
Nantou ba-wan is eaten in two stages. Diners eat the wrapper first and leave the filling in the bowl, then pour in bone stock, which the shops give free (some offer bonito stock instead), and finish the filling with it. A customer told TVBS that the meat has to wait until the stock goes in, and that only people who grew up eating Shuili ba-wan know to do this.
Where it comes from
The Dong family began selling from a roadside stall in front of the Meidu Theatre (美都戏院), a well-known theatre in Shuili, and TVBS dates the family's way of adding bone stock to the filling to 1963. The business later split into three shops run by three Dong brothers, all in Shuili and less than 100 metres apart. By 2012 the shops were passing to the next generation, and one of the founding brothers told TVBS that the method had not changed.
Chinese Wikipedia also lists a shop called Shuili Ba-wan (水里肉圆) in Jiji Township (集集镇) among Nantou's best-known ba-wan.
Sources & reading
Written from the linked sources and checked sentence by sentence against quoted extracts by a separate reviewer on 2026-09-25. Recipes and servings vary between kitchens.