Ever since I ate fish balls in my hometown in the countryside, I have fallen deeply in love with this popular delicacy that is delicious and fragrant. After I came back, I thought about doing it myself several times. I relied on my intelligence developed in the foodie world and gave full play to my imagination on the right side of my brain to try to restore the fish ball making process. Then I used my magical left brain to logically organize and classify the picture information restored by my right brain and form an orderly structure. The words were finally spoken carefully by the greedy and picky little mouth.

Based on the essence of the Heart Sutra of the God of Cooking, I draw lessons from Chaoshan fish ball craftsmanship, fully integrate the northern and southern craftsmanship, and practice the principle of true knowledge through repeated trials. Hard work paid off (failure is really the mother of success), and I finally mastered the ingenious method of hand-made fish balls with a delicious and chewy aftertaste. You can make your favorite fragrant and delicious fish balls every time.

Have a bowl, it will be refreshing and refreshing. The editor unconsciously started to get excited ^_^

Now I will introduce to you the preparation of her flagship product of One Fish and Four Foods - the delicious and fragrant hand-made fish balls. method. Welcome to applaud and watch.

Main ingredients: a suitable pound of grass carp, about half a pound of lard, 3 egg whites, a handful of green onions, 40g of cornstarch, a few pieces of ginger (not Guangdong’s southern ginger, nor sand ginger) ), appropriate amount of pepper.

①Choose the main ingredient - fish: Although most freshwater fish can be used as ingredients, the fish balls made from the meat of grass carp will be more delicious.

The selection of materials is all done personally. Fat, thin and fresh must be inspected in person before purchasing to ensure that the ingredients are fresh and delicious. She went to the vegetable market early and carefully selected a fresh grass carp. You can decide the size according to how many fish balls you want to make. The one she chose this time was five pounds, and she asked the stall owner to help remove the scales and kill it, and then took it home and cleaned it by herself.

②Clean, debone and remove the head and tail

Rinse the fish and dry the fish body. Next, cook and dice the fish.

I saw her holding the knife and placing it on the tail of the fish, gently pulling it. Then she turned the knife edge to flatten it and pushed it forward layer by layer from the tail to the fish head. When she reached the head of the fish, she lifted the knife and then downwards. With just one stroke, half of the fish body was removed smoothly. If so, remove another piece of fish body. Cut the removed fish bones and heads into sections and put them into a basin for later use.

③ Remove the belly and skin:

Without saying a word, put on a light knife (it’s even better if you have a sashimi knife), raise your wrist, and use the thin and sharp knife. The belly of the fish has been cut into pieces. Then he picked up the middle section of the fish, placed the knife between the skin and the meat, and gently pushed and pulled it forward. Most of the fish skin had been peeled off smoothly. See, this is her skill. Since the knife I used this time is one that I occasionally use for cooking, it was her first time to use it, and she had not yet reached the level of combining a human and a knife, so the effect was a little worse than before. It's all my fault, it's not that her knife skills are not good enough.

There is a classic old saying in our rural hometown: Killing pigs and buttholes, everyone has his own way of doing it. Although it seems vulgar and unrefined, his words are rough but not rough. As long as you can get the same result, why bother sticking to some bullshit knife technique? It doesn’t matter what kind of knife or method it is, if it can peel off the fish skin, it is a good method!

Okay, let me put it in an elegant way for you, and it will make it seem like I was once a scholar. It seems that Sun Bin once said: The law has no fixed method, and the formula has no fixed formula.

Here’s an important point! Say important things three times! Important points: When peeling, be sure to remove the red layer of fish meat. Why must it be? I'll let you know for a while, so I can try to find a way out with you later.

④ Picking out the thorns:

After doing the above, if you want to be more meticulous, then find a way to pick out the small thorns hidden in the fish body.

⑤Chopped fish paste:

A rough person like me will be more direct and skip ④ and start chopping directly. After removing the fish head, tail, bones, belly, and skin, the fish body is still about 2 pounds. As long as the chopping board is big enough, I usually use one knife on the left and one on the left to help, and chop it up and down repeatedly. I chop the lard fat together with the prepared fish body until it is minced. . Gently pinch it with two fingers, and it will be as moist as minced meat and fine mud. Of course she didn't have the strength, so she carefully chopped while paying attention to the thorns, and picked out as many as possible. Slowly chop with a single knife until it is minced into fish paste (the spines are also at the end of the paste). Slow work will produce fine work, who can say otherwise.

⑥Stirring

When the fish paste is well organized, transfer it to a mixing basin, pour in the 3 egg whites prepared in advance, and start stirring. Wash and chop finely (the finer the better) green onion (be sure to only take the white part of the green onion) and stir it in while stirring; then add the soaked ginger water (chop the ginger and soak it in water, then filter out the minced ginger residue) , cornstarch, and pepper are slowly sprinkled into the basin and stir thoroughly. Until the fish paste mixture sticks to each other when stirred (pulling can pull the thread together without stopping).

⑦Throwing

Lift the mixed fish paste into the air and then drop it hard into the basin, repeat several times. Friends from Hunan and Hubei who have experienced traditional stone mortar making rice cakes or have seen stone mortar making rice cakes, do you think it is the same as taking the pounded glutinous rice balls out of the stone mortar, lifting them into the air and then smashing them into the stone mortar?

Then why beat the fish paste?

⑧Fishball Forming

Boil the water in a pot until it is warm, immediately turn off the heat to the minimum and keep warm, and you can start making the meatballs! The editor stopped talking and went directly to the video screen.

When the fish balls float in the pot, you are done. Take it out, drain it and pack it away!

The following editor will reveal the answer to "why" in the article:

Question 1: Why is it necessary to remove the red meat when removing the fish skin?

Because after the red meat is minced into puree, the color of the entire fish paste cannot be kept pure and white, and red will be mixed in. This is also true for only taking the white segments of green onions.

Question 2: The fish paste has been fully stirred, and you can obviously make fish balls directly, so why do you still beat it?

Beat it hard repeatedly to increase the toughness of the meat paste, so that the final fish balls can reach the ideal elasticity.