hello this is chef john from food wishes comm with lions head meatballs that's
right some people think the name comes from their large size while others
believe it's because eating these gives you the strength of a lion but the
actual answer is not quite as mythical all right apparently the people that
invented these thought the crinkled up cabbage cooked around the meatballs look
to them like a lion's mane and I'm guessing a little bit of rice wine may
have been involved in that but anyway that's what they thought and it works
for me so with that let's go ahead and get started
by rehydrating some shitake mushrooms which means putting about an ounce of
dried shiitake in a bowl and then pouring over some boiling water which we
will let sit for about an hour or until they soften up enough to slice and while
we're waiting for that we can move on to chop up some water chestnuts which for
me come packed in water and it can slice like this and what we'll do after
draining about 1/2 a cup of those is go ahead and chop those up with a cleaver
until they are fairly finely minced and while those do taste nice we are mostly
adding those in for their texture and then once those are chopped we're
basically going to do the same thing with a piece of tofu some firm tofu to
be exact and what I think we should do is slice it first and then we'll pile
those up and cut them into strips and then eventually turn those strips and
cut across into a dice at which point we can continue chopping until they're as
small as we want and by the way yes it does feel kind of funny eddie tofu - a
pork meatball I mean I kind of feel like a double agent but it really does help
keep these meatballs very light and tender so we will go ahead and chop that
up until it's fairly fine and I know there's a couple bigger pieces there but
those are gonna break up as we mix it with the pork which by the way is the
next step so once chopped let's go ahead and
transfer our water chestnuts and tofu into a large bowl and then to it add one
pound of nice fatty freshly ground pork and how I knew mine was freshly ground
and fatty is that I had to butcher do it okay you do not have to settle for the
meat in the case just go to the butcher counter pointed a nice fatty piece of
pork shoulder and tell the butcher to grind you a pound of that and not only
won't they mind they will enjoy doing and then to that we will add some finely
minced green onions plus about three or four cloves of crushed garlic as well as
some freshly and finely grated ginger which we should probably smear around a
little bit to get a head start on the mixing and then to this we will add a
splash a Chinese rice wine which is called Xiao Jing or something like that
but if you don't have that like I don't you can just use some dry sherry which
works nicely and then we will also want to add some soy sauce to this as well as
some salt and a little touch of cayenne which we will balance with a little bit
of brown sugar and then we will finish up with one large whole egg that I like
to drop in from a high distance so the oak breaks when it hits and then last
but not least a little dusting of cornstarch and that's it we'll go ahead
and get in there with a nice clean hand and we will mix all this until
thoroughly combined and fair warning when you first start mixing it's gonna
seem kind of loose and thin and a little wet and like it's not gonna come
together but don't worry just keep mixing in a mashing and in just a few
minutes that will tighten up and kind of pull together and you should eventually
end up with something that looks like this and theoretically at this point if
we had to we could start forming our meatballs but like all seasoned ground
meat mixtures I really do think we should wrap this up and let it chill in
the fridge for at least an hour or two which I believe gives those flavors time
to develop as well as I think it's gonna be easier to work with so I did pop mine
in the fridge for a few hours at which point we'll go ahead and pull it out and
once unwrapped we'll go ahead and form these into some nice large meatballs
using of course some nice wet fingers and pounds because as you may have heard
before damp hands make smooth balls so we'll go ahead and form some nice large
meatballs as shown and if you make them as big as I am you'll get exactly six
out of this recipe and then once shaped these are traditionally deep-fried or
browned in a pan which is kind of messy but also kind of difficult because this
mixture is very very soft so what I think's much easier is place these on
some oiled foil on a pan and simply popping them under a hot boiler for
about 10 minutes or until they're beautifully browned and while we don't
want these cooked through we do want that outside surface kind of seared and
sealed which we've accomplished here quickly
with very little mess but regardless of how your meatballs get brown we'll go
ahead and let those cool while we move on to prep our pot which we will be
lining with some cabbage and what we'll do first is trim off the bottom of a
variety called napa cabbage which is delicious and beautiful but if you can't
find your regular cabbage will work and what I like to do is slice about half of
it in ribbons and then we'll go ahead and place that in the bottom of our pot
and then once that's in we'll go ahead and arrange the whole leaves on top of
that like this and not to spoil the surprise but eventually we're going to
nestle our meatballs on top of that but not before we add in our sliced shiitake
which by now hopefully soaked long enough to be soft and sliceable and I'm
not sure if you have to or not but the stems on these are fairly fibrous and
tough so I generally like to trim those out before I slice and by the way if you
can't find dried shiitake you can always use fresh mushrooms so please feel free
to use those if you want I mean you are after all the humongus of
your fungus although if you do use fresh button mushrooms
I would probably sautee those before you use them but anyway we'll go ahead and
slice and scatter our mushrooms over the top at which point we can Nestle our
meatballs into our cabbage leaves ideally equally spaced and of course
we're also going to pour over the accumulated juices but man cannot cook
with accumulated juices alone which is why once that set we need to mix up our
cooking liquid which will start by straining our mushrooms soaking liquid
into this bowl and that's just so we catch any sand that might have been in
those mushrooms and then to that we will add some chicken stock or broth as well
as a few tablespoons of soy sauce and another couple tablespoons of our sherry
wine and please note how very carefully I'm measuring this as in not very
carefully which is fine it's not one of those dishes and of course we can always
adjust things later if we need and then we'll go ahead and finish up with a
little bit of sesame oil plus another spoon of corn starch and we'll take a
whisk and mix that until it's dissolved at which point we can go ahead and add
that to our pot and yes of course you can just dump that right in but for some
reason it just feels like we should bathe each meatball as we do
I don't know why but it does and that's it once our cooking liquid is in we will
head to the stove and place this on high heat because what we want to do is bring
this up to a boil and then once we see our liquid bubbling enthusiastically
like this we will lower our heat to medium-low cover this and let it simmer
for 20 minutes and if everything goes according to plan in about 20 minutes it
should look something like this okay that cabbage will have slumped down and
our meatball should be just about cooked and at this point I like to give them a
nice basting oh and if my pan leg looks like it has cornstarch on it because I
dropped an entire container on the floor that's exactly what happened but anyway
back to the recipe what we'll do to finish this is turn our heat back to
medium-high and cook it for about 10 minutes uncovered just to reduce and
intensify those cooking liquids a little bit which of course we can always sample
to see how we're doing and after tasting I actually decided to add a spoon of
brown sugar since sugar is a very common ingredient
in this cooking liquid but since I did add some to the meatball already I
decided to wait until this point to decide so I did stir in a little bit of
that but otherwise I thought it was perfectly seasoned and like I said all
we need to do to finish this is cook it uncovered on medium high for about 10
minutes or so or until that broth reduces to our liking okay I like mine
pretty brothy whereas other folks prefer it more like a sauce which you can
achieve by reducing or adding more cornstarch but to me this was looking
perfect right here so I turned it off and served up and of course besides our
Lions Head meatball we're also gonna want to enjoy that with our cabbage and
mushrooms and then once I have that all spooned up I went ahead and drape some
of that cabbage over the top because like I said in the intro apparently it's
the look of this crinkled up napa cabbage on the meatball that reminded
the people that invented and named this dish of a lion's mane so I went ahead
and arranged some of that over the top and when I was done it really didn't
look like a lion's mane it looked a lot more like cabbage draped over a meatball
but still pretty good-looking nonetheless and I went ahead and
finished up with some sliced green onions
as well as a little drizzle of chili oil which is nothing more than oil in which
we've steeped some red pepper flakes so I went ahead and spooned a little of
that over the top and that's it our lion's head meatball is ready to enjoy
so let me go ahead and grab a spoon and dig in and also grab a fork to hedge my
bets and thanks to using some nice fatty pork plus adding in those chopped water
chestnuts and tofu we've achieved a meatball so light and tender it almost
defies description all right people throw the term
melt-in-your-mouth around pretty casually but these meatballs really are
melt in your mouth are just that addictive combination of something
that's highly flavorful and rich and satisfying
yet somehow delivered in this feather-light texture plus they
basically come with a free bowl of soup so I just absolutely love everything
about these and I usually have a pretty good idea of how authentic or not
authentic a recipe I do is but this time I don't since I've probably looked at
about a hundred different recipes for this and not a single one of them is
exactly the same as another but what I do know is that these were amazing which
is why I really do hope you give them a try soon so please follow the links
below for the ingredient amounts a printable written recipe and more info
as usual and as always enjoy
you