Sunday, May 04, 2008

Meatball Soup Hokkien style


This is a dish I learnt from my MIL. Its a tradition for my Hubs side of family to cook this meal every Chinese New Year. Since its so delicious, we have it more often :). Its a fairly simple and satisfying dish and needs just 10 ingredients - minced pork, sengkuang (yam bean), Shitake mushrooms, onions, garlic, cornstarch. Seasonings - salt, pepper, dark soy sauce and light soy sauce.
First:
Soak the mushrooms till soft.
Chop up the sengkuang and onions finely. Mix them with the minced pork. Add some salt, pepper and a lil bit of dark soy sauce. Add some cornstarch to help the meat hold well. Roll them up into balls, pat on some light soy sauce and roll em somemore to get your hands all smelling porky.
Heat up some oil and deep fry them until a nice brown colour. Set aside.
For the soup, boil water, add in mushrooms, garlic and some of the oil used to deep fry the meatballs. Boil it up. Add in the meatballs, bring to a boil and serve.
I've made this 3 times and several tips to share:
- Make the meatballs slightly bigger than how you want them to be. They shrink after deep frying.
- Don't use lean meat and chop em up as your 'minced pork'. You need fat in the meat to make the meatballs nice and juicy.
- Add some ikan bilis to the soup to give it more taste.
- Don't be afraid to be generous with the oil you put into the soup. It gives the much needed flavour.
Enjoy!

3 comments:

edwin74 said...

hmmm actually if u pick a fatty enough pork cut... u can cut putting oil in... since it comes out naturally from the pork after boiling...

hmmm but your style is slighty dif... ours has mini scallops and we dont deep fry the balls, and in the soup also got stomach parts,ginko nuts and sengkuang...

coffeedreames said...

I don't boil the meat for long in the soup coz it will cause the meatballs to 'open up' so the oil may not be able to come out much...

ooohhh mini scallops sounds good. You put into the soup or the meatballs? Not a fan of spare parts haha

edwin74 said...

most of the stuff are in the soup... meatballs are an added plus to the soup...