Youth League

Overview

Basically every family in our Jiangnan area will make some Youth League meals during Qingming Festival. When I was very young, I remember my grandma using mugwort juice to soften rice flour, wrap it with meat and bean paste, and cook it in a pot (the steamed version is more delicious, but it is too time-consuming, so when I make it at home, I usually boil it directly in water). Now that I have grown up and have a family, my grandma is no longer here and my mother is getting older; it was my turn to make it, but neither my husband nor my son liked the taste of mugwort, so I had to use spinach juice instead. No matter what the original intention of eating Qingtuan during Qingming Festival is, I just use it to miss my grandma

Tags

• staple food
• snacks
• home cooking
• chicken essence
• onions
• pork
• rice wine
• spinach
• ginger
• glutinous rice noodles
• salt

Ingredients

Steps

1. 1 Wash the spinach and put it into the boiled water (the amount of water is the same as the amount of soft powder) and cook until it is cooked (just boil for another minute or two after boiling). Pour the spinach and water into the food processor to make juice and filter out the residue to make the soft powder

   

2. 2 Boil the spinach in a pot and pour it into a food processor with water (the water is almost the amount needed for soft flour). Blend into juice and filter out the residue for use in soft flour

   

3. 3 Generally speaking, the meat filling for making meatballs is 60% lean meat and 40% fat meat (too much lean meat will not taste good, and too much fat meat will make you unable to eat); mince the lean meat, and cut the fat meat into small dices. Prepare an appropriate amount of ginger, onion, and yellow wine and put it into a food processor to make juice. Then add an appropriate amount of salt and chicken essence (this year I added a little more Taoda Toudaoxian to make it taste better), and finally add a little sugar (we Jiangnan people like sweetness) and the meat filling is ready

   

4. 4 Cut the lean meat and fat meat separately, mince the lean meat, cut the fat meat into cubes and put them into a basin; use a food processor to beat the ginger, green onion and rice wine (you can add some water when calling). Pour it into the meat and beat in one direction. Add an appropriate amount of water and beat again. Repeat it again and it is almost ready. Add salt, sugar and chicken essence to make it taste delicious

   

5. 5 It must not be dry when softening the powder, otherwise the texture will be very hard. 2. The spinach must be juiced to the soft powder quickly. The hotter the water used to soften glutinous rice flour, the stickier it will be. 3. Lean meat and fat meat must be cut separately. The ground meat is not so delicious. 4. I was lazy and did not prepare the skin jelly in advance. I just added more water, so if you want to have more soup when eating, you must add the skin jelly

   

6. 6 When making soft powder, it should not be too hard (dry), otherwise the texture will be hard. 2. Lean meat and fat meat must be cut separately by yourself. The meat minced by a meat grinder is not very tasty. 3. When adding water, if you feel a strong resistance, add another time. Otherwise, the taste will be different after it is undercooked. If you want more juice, you can prepare some jelly in advance and put it in the bag