There is a popular saying in Guangdong, "Eat in Guangzhou, cook in Fengcheng, taste in Chaoshan".

Chaoshan delicacies are definitely famous in Guangdong, so many people will think of Chaoshan delicacies when they mention Chaoshan.

Beef balls are indispensable in Chaoshan cuisine and the most well-known cultural symbol.

A small beef ball contains rich energy and is full of elasticity. When you bite it, it will be juicy and fragrant!

Chaoshan people like to boil the original soup, then add water, garlic crisps and celery beads. It tastes so satisfying!

When I was studying, my classmates would ask me to buy some beef balls and bring them back when I went home during the winter and summer vacations.

At that time, I thought to myself, why would I have to come all the way to bring them here if they are also sold? It wasn’t until I ate the beef balls sold outside that I realized that the so-called Chaoshan beef balls here are all starch mixed with unknown meat.

Yeah, it's soft and tasteless when you bite it.

I believe everyone has eaten a lot of beef balls, so do you know how Chaoshan beef balls are made?

Although it is called Chaoshan beef balls, beef balls were not invented by Chaoshan people, but by Hakkas!

At the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Republic of China, there were people who carried burdens and sold various things in the Chaoshan area, including beef balls made by the Hakka people. The shrewd Chaoshan people saw that the beef balls tasted good, so they imitated and transplanted them.

It was improved and became the current beef balls!

Before various machines were invented, the making of beef balls was done by hand.

Use a special square solid iron rod to beat a whole piece of beef shank into minced meat like a drum before proceeding to the next step.

But this kind of operation is very rare nowadays!

You may sometimes see some businesses advertising that they are hand-beaten beef balls, which are beaten with iron rods, but in fact most of them are just gimmicks. If it is a family-style workshop only for locals to buy, it will be credible.

It will be a little higher. If it is sold on an online platform, 99% of it is not purely handmade beef balls, because the efficiency of pure hand-made beef balls is too low and it is simply impossible to satisfy so many orders sold online.

There is a misunderstanding here. When many people see the words handmade and hand-made, they will automatically think of delicious food. In fact, this is not necessarily the case. Hand-made food may not be more delicious than machine-made food. Why?

You will understand after reading the following introduction to the production process.

1. Let’s talk about hand-made first.

Choose yellow beef from the hind leg, because the hind leg meat is lean and tough, so it is suitable for making elastic beef balls.

After pounding the meat into minced meat with an iron rod, add the seasonings and start stirring and beating with both hands. Because the beef balls are more likely to deteriorate due to the influence of temperature after being minced, this step must be done in one go. Dozens of kilograms of meat must be stirred with both hands.

Beating is very tiring, and once it is not done properly, the meat will basically be useless.

This is also one of the reasons why hand-made food may not taste better than machine-made food as mentioned earlier. There are too many uncertainties in hand-made food.

Generally, only masters who have been working for more than ten years can do it well.

You can't stop beating after beating hard. You must immediately squeeze it into a ball shape with your hands and put it in hot water to set. The whole process is time-consuming and labor-intensive. If you endure enough, you can only make a maximum of 100 kilograms in a whole day, so those who sell online

Thousands of them are basically impossible to make purely by hand.

2. The beef balls made by machine do not necessarily taste bad.

The general process of machine beating of beef ball machines is the same as the previous hand beating, except that manual labor is replaced by machines.

First, put the meat into a meat grinder and mince it, then put it into a special machine and stir it vigorously. There will be a bucket outside this machine for you to pour ice cubes into, because the temperature will rise when the machine is stirring.

, beef will deteriorate when the temperature is high, so ice cubes should be added to cool down the machine during the beating process.

Some will beat the dough and then squeeze it into balls by hand into hot water, while others will directly use a ball machine to extrude neat balls.

This is a rough production process of beef balls.

It can be said that there are basically no beef balls made of pure beef on the market.

Some pork is mixed in. The mixing ratio in Chaoshan is usually 2/8 or 3/7. In addition to cost considerations, the mixed meat also neutralizes the taste of the two types of meat.

But please don’t get me wrong, Chaoshan beef balls use fresh and warm meat, so that the beef balls will be delicious.

Various other ingredients, such as MSG, salt, fish sauce, etc., vary from store to store, but the same seasoning that is always added to Chaoshan beef balls is garlic crispy (for the preparation method, please see the link: Only with this seasoning can you

It’s called authentic Chaoshan noodle soup, and today I’ll teach you how to make it at home in detail).

Beef balls have a wide range of uses. They can generally be used to make soups, such as beef ball seaweed soup, beef ball soup noodles, etc. They can also be used for barbecue. Cut them in half and use a knife. Brush them with barbecue sauce and bake them. It is very delicious.

It is also a must-have dish in Guangdong area.