Changhua Meatball

Changhua meatball, ba wan, is the signature dish of Changhua city on Taiwan's central west coast, and the dish that gives the broader Taiwanese ba wan family its defining central-Taiwan style. The meatball as a dish exists across Taiwan, but regional styles differ sharply, and Changhua's is the most renowned, distinguished by its sweet-potato-starch wrapper, its pork-and-bamboo-shoot filling, and its low-temperature oil-bath cooking method rather than steaming. Legend credits its invention to a vendor in the late Qing or early Japanese era who made the dumplings as a snack for local festivals, the wrapper of sweet-potato starch being a cheap central-Taiwan staple. The wrapper, made of a dough of sweet-potato starch and water, is filled with marinated minced pork and diced bamboo shoot, sealed, and cooked in warm oil at around 100 degrees C, a low-temperature fry that sets the starch into a translucent, gelatinously chewy skin rather than crisping it. The cooked meatball is bathed in a sweet-savoury sauce of soy, sugar and garlic paste, and finished with cilantro and chili. Changhua's old-city meatball shops, many trading for generations, remain the benchmark.

A translucent, gelatinously chewy wrapper yielding to a savoury, garlicky pork-and-bamboo-shoot filling, the whole bathed in a sweet-savoury sauce with a kick of chili. The skin is the pleasure, bouncy and stickily soft against the rich filling.

The technique is the sweet-potato-starch wrapper and its low-temperature oil-bath. Sweet-potato starch is mixed with hot water to form a gelatinous, translucent dough, which is portioned and pressed into a bowl-shape. A filling of minced pork marinated in soy, sugar, five-spice and white pepper, mixed with diced bamboo shoot, is mounded in, and the wrapper is sealed shut into a round dumpling. The dumplings are then cooked in oil held at a low temperature, around 90 to 110 degrees C, well below frying temperature, for 8 to 10 minutes, this gelatinises and sets the starch into the characteristic translucent, chewy, bouncy skin without browning or crisping it, a method closer to poaching in oil than frying. Some shops finish with a brief high-heat fry to crisp the outside, but the classic Changhua skin stays soft. The sauce, a reduction of soy, sugar, water and rice paste thickener with raw garlic paste stirred in, is poured over, and the bowl finished with cilantro and a chili paste. The contrast of the chewy wrapper, the savoury filling and the sweet-savoury sauce defines the dish.