Shantou beef balls can be divided into beef balls and beef tendon balls. Beef balls are fresh and tender, and the taste is tender and smooth. Beef balls add some tender tendons to beef, and the taste is just a little chewy. It is said that good beef balls can bounce when thrown on the ground. In the past, beef balls were all made by hand, so maybe this kind of performance can be performed. Because they are all manually operated, the cost is higher than that of the mechanism. [3][4][5]

Shantou Beef Ball is a famous local snacks in Chaoshan area, which is famous for its softness, moistening, freshness and coolness. Its production skills originated from the official court dish "Daozhen" more than 2,000 years ago, which has been circulated in Chaoshan area for hundreds of years. [6][7]

In the past, most farmers raised cattle. When the commodity economy was not very developed, the surplus raw beef could not be preserved for a long time, so they chopped up the beef, added salt, squeezed it into balls and cooked it, and gradually became a local snack. What really made beef balls a well-known Chaoshan snack was attributed to Chaoshan chefs until they were rated as "Chinese famous snacks" and became famous at home and abroad. As early as the 1920s, in the area of the most prosperous small park in Shantou Port, the clever Chaoshan master found beef balls very popular and distinctive, so he introduced "transplantation". And from the selection of materials, ingredients to production methods have been innovated and transformed, so as to create a unique Chaoshan beef ball.

Shantou beef balls must use fresh beef ham, remove fascia and grease, cut into pieces, pound them into minced beef with an iron hammer, put them into a wooden basin, add water, starch, edible salt, monosodium glutamate and a proper amount of seasoning, stir them, beat them hard with the palm of your hand to make the minced beef glue foam, then grasp the meat glue into fists with your fists, and knead them into balls with your thumb and forefinger. Making beef balls is heavy physical labor. With the development of the market and the surge of supply and demand, many shops specializing in beef balls use mechanical production instead of manual production. Although the output was increased and the labor cost was saved, the original taste and quality of handmade beef balls were lost. At present, only a few stalls in Shantou and even Chaoshan still retain this pure traditional production skill. In view of the loss of beef ball making skills, it is urgent to protect and inherit the beef ball making skills.