The original recipe, from Recipes: Chinese Cooking from Time Life Books (1968), says that it serves 4 as a main course or 6 to 8 as an appetizer or side dish. If you are serving it as a main dish, serve with stir fried or steamed Chinese vegetables, otherwise two people can easily devour them all.
Course Entree
Cuisine Chinese
Prep Time 3hours
Cook Time 30minutes
Total Time 3hours30minutes
Servings 4servings
Calories 476kcal
Author Stephanie Stiavetti
Ingredients
1/2cupglutinous (sticky) rice
1cupcold water
4wholedried Chinese or shi’itake mushrooms
1/2cupwarm water
1poundlean ground pork
1largeegglightly beaten
1tablespoonsoy sauce
1 1/2tablespoonsalt
1/2teaspoonsugar(optional)
1teaspoonfinely choppedpeeled fresh ginger root (or MORE! but don’t use ground ginger)
6wholecanned water chestnutsdrained and finely chopped
1wholescallionfinely chopped including green top
Instructions
Prepare ahead:
In a small bowl, cover the rice with 1 cup of cold water and soak for 2 hours. Drain rice, spread it out on a cloth towel and let it dry.
In a small bowl cover the mushrooms with 1/2 cup of warm water and let them soak for 30 minutes. Discard the water (or save for your stock pot). Cut away stems and chop the caps finely.
Combine the pork, egg, soy sauce, salt, and sugar in a mixing bowl. Mix together until the ingredients are thoroughly blended. Add ginger, water chestnuts, scallions, and your chopped mushrooms, mixing thoroughly. Shape mixture into balls, about the size of a golf ball and put onto wax paper.
Roll one pork ball at a time in the rice, pressing gently but firmly so the rice grains adhere to the meat. The pork balls should be well coated with rice.
To Cook:
If you have a bamboo steamer, arrange the balls inside so that they do not touch. If you don’t have a bamboo steamer, you can create your own steaming chamber: get a large pot and place a heatproof bowl upside down in it.
Fill with water within an inch of the top of the bowl. Place a heat proof plate 1/2 inch smaller than the diameter of the pot on top of the bowl. The plate must be small enough to allow the steam to rise and circulate.
If your pot is tall enough, you can arrange two steaming layers, as in the pictures (shown post steaming).
Arrange the pork balls on the plate, bring the water in the steamer to a boil and cover the pan tightly. Keeping the water at a continuous boil and replenishing it if it boils away, steam the pork balls for 30 minutes. Serve at once with plum (hoisin) sauce.