Tofu balls

Overview

In Guangxi Zhuangjia, every festival or wedding banquet, there is an indispensable delicacy, which is shaped like an orange and symbolizes auspicious reunion, that is Zhuangjia Tofu Balls. Your family has ten acres of land, which is no better than my small vegetable garden. You don’t have to worry about not having rice to cook in the morning. I can make fermented tofu balls with rice wine for dinner at night. An ancient folk song shows the status of tofu balls in the hearts of local people. Traditional tofu balls are divided into water tofu balls and fried tofu balls, among which water tofu balls are more famous. In our hometown of Yizhou, we call the process of making tofu balls stuffed. The tofu is mashed and stuffed with a filling of pork, lard residue, fungus, mushrooms, peanut powder, chopped green onion, starch, monosodium glutamate, and glutinous rice to form tofu balls. There are two ways to eat it: fried and steamed. The fried ones have golden skin, are crispy and refreshing, and are easy to carry; the steamed ones are just like the steaming method of steamed buns, with original flavor, good taste and not greasy on the throat. Authentic water tofu balls require steamed glutinous rice and lard residue to be prepared in advance, and the material preparation time is relatively long. The water tofu balls we are going to make below are the home-made version, omitting the ingredients glutinous rice and lard residue. Friends who have time can add these two ingredients to try, and it will be a new experience for the taste buds!

Tags

• baking
• hot dishes
• children
• afternoon tea
• spring recipes
• fast food
• chives
• cooking wine
• dried shiitake mushrooms
• egg
• horseshoe
• lao doufu
• light soy sauce
• msg
• peanuts
• pork
• starch
• water fungus
• salt

Ingredients

Steps

1. 1 Prepare materials. Cut the tofu into small pieces and place them on a mesh screen to filter the water. Soak the dried mushrooms in water. Peel and wash the water chestnuts

   

2. 2 Bake the peanuts in the middle rack of the oven at 185°C for 5 minutes, then peel off the skin after cooling.

   

3. 3 Chop the water-cooked fungus, water chestnuts, and shiitake mushrooms into dices, and chop the peeled peanuts into peanut powder

   

4. 4 Chop the pork and stir it directly in a food processor to save time

   

5. 5 Pour all the ingredients in the picture into the stirred meat filling, add chopped green onions, cooking wine, salt, MSG, light soy sauce, and starch and stir evenly

   

6. 6 Shape the mixed filling into small balls and set aside (the size of the balls determines the size of the finished product, so try to be as moderate as possible)

   

7. 7 Pour the drained tofu into a basin and mash it, add an egg and mix well again. Tofu itself is soft and can be mashed directly by hand.

   

8. 8 Take a handful of tofu and spread it in the palm of your hand, put a meatball in it, wrap the meatball in the tofu like a glutinous rice ball, and then quickly flip the tofu ball with your left and right hands alternately in the palm of your hand 4 to 5 times (this action is to make the tofu and filling more tightly combined)

   

9. 9 Place the wrapped tofu balls on cotton gauze to absorb water for a second time. (I couldn’t find gauze, so I used bamboo fiber kitchen absorbent cloth instead)

   

10. 10 Pour cooking oil into the pan. Once the oil is hot, gently add the tofu balls and fry over medium-low heat until golden brown on both sides

    

11. 11 The tofu balls can be fried and eaten directly, or you can fry them until they are half-cooked, then add an appropriate amount of stock and simmer for a few minutes, then when the soup is almost dry, sprinkle some chives, remove from the pot and put on a plate, and you will have a delicious tofu ball.

    

12. 12 Finished product pictures