Changji Meatball Soup 昌吉丸子汤

Changji Meatball Soup (昌吉丸子汤) is a meatball soup from Changji Hui Autonomous Prefecture (昌吉回族自治州) in Xinjiang. One version, sold under the brand name Sishijiu Meatball Soup (四十九丸子汤), is a beef-bone soup with fried beef meatballs; it began in 1986 as a roadside Hui (回族) snack shop in Yushugou Township (榆树沟乡), Changji City (昌吉市).

How it is made

In the Sishijiu version the stock is made from the bones of local Xinjiang cattle, simmered slowly with several herbs and seasonings. The meatballs are made from chilled, aged beef; they are fried first and then stewed in the soup. The bowl also holds sliced beef, ferula mushrooms (阿魏菇), frozen tofu, sweet-potato starch noodles and spinach.

How it is eaten

A bowl at Sishijiu comes with two youtazi (油塔子) and a small side dish. Traditional youtazi are made with pure mutton fat or pure beef fat; Sishijiu's are made from dough with a little leavened starter, vegetable oil and beef fat, then steamed, and come out white and tower-shaped. The shops also sell beef bones and mianqizi (面旗子), small square noodles.

Where it comes from

Wang Junqing (王军青) and Ma Qin (马琴) opened their shop beside National Highway 312 in 1986, at the 49-kilometre point of the Urumqi-Yining road, which gave the brand its name. Their customers, mostly long-distance lorry drivers, favoured the meatball soup and big beef bones at any hour, so the couple turned the shop over to meatball soup alone. They opened their first Urumqi (乌鲁木齐) branch in 2004 and later expanded to Xi'an (西安). In February 2024 the Xinjiang Department of Commerce named Sishijiu Meatball Soup in its first list of 35 Xinjiang time-honoured brands (新疆老字号).