Homemade Mushroom Meatballs

Taste: Salty and savory; Cooking method: Boiling; Time required: Several hours; Difficulty: Moderate.

Detailed Steps for Making Homemade Mushroom Meatballs

Soak the mushrooms in water for about half an hour before cooking.

Wash the pork and cut it into pieces about the size of a thumb.

Put the pork into a food processor and grind it into minced meat (if you don’t have a food processor, you can chop it by hand, but try to make it as fine as possible). Add some ginger and the white part of the scallions while grinding the meat.

Chop the mushrooms into small pieces.

Put the minced meat and chopped mushrooms into a container. Add salt, soy sauce, rice wine, homemade shrimp-flavored monosodium glutamate, cornstarch, and flour. Stir well and add a small amount of water twice during the process.

Use your hands to beat the mixture for about half an hour (I switched to a larger container for convenience). Check if it’s ready by grabbing a handful of the meat mixture. It should feel very firm, even a bit hard. The longer you beat the mixture, the more chewy the meatballs will be. There is no oil added to the meat mixture, and my hands were covered in oil after beating it for a while.

Boil some water in a pot over low heat and add two slices of ginger.

When the water is slightly warm, wet your hands and grab a handful of the meat mixture, squeezing out small meatballs and putting them into the pot. Alternatively, you can take an appropriate amount of the meat mixture and roll it into small balls with your hands.

Squeeze out all the meat mixture and turn up the heat to high.

Boil until all the meatballs float to the surface. After they are cooked, remove them from the pot and let them cool. If you can’t finish them all at once, you can freeze them in the refrigerator. The soup can be used to cook noodles or other ingredients, and it’s very delicious.