What it is
Lion's head (獅子頭, shizitou) is a big pork meatball made with plenty of fat, so it stays loose and tender after long cooking. The name comes from its shape, said to look like the head of a Chinese guardian lion. The white version is stewed or steamed with napa cabbage. The red version (紅燒獅子頭) is braised with soy sauce.
Where it came from
The dish belongs to Huaiyang cooking from eastern China. It is tied above all to Yangzhou, and to a lesser degree Zhenjiang and Huai'an. Yangzhou cooks favour the plain version and Zhenjiang the red.
Its early history is legend. One story says Emperor Yang of the Sui dynasty was served a dish called 葵花斬肉 ("sunflower chopped meat"). Another has a Tang official, Wei Zhi (韋陟), renaming it while eating in Yangzhou. Neither story has any evidence behind it. A similar meatball recorded by a mid-Qing Yangzhou salt merchant may be the real ancestor, and Xu Ke's Qing bai lei chao (清稗類鈔), a collection of Qing-era notes, gives a recipe with equal parts fat and lean bound with egg white. Migrants later carried the dish into Shanghai cooking. Northern restaurants adapted it into four-joy meatballs (四喜丸子).
In Taiwan it often appears on the New Year table. By one custom a banquet serves six, for the lucky phrase 六六大順 ("smooth in every way"). Tofu lion's head, which mixes tofu into the meat, is counted among the thrifty dishes invented by mothers in the military dependents' villages (眷村).
How it is made
Fatty and lean pork are cut into small dice and bound with egg white or starch. Fat and lean shrink at different rates during long cooking, which gives the surface its knobbly look. Cooks may add one seasonal extra, such as water chestnut, crab roe or bamboo shoot. The balls are set on napa cabbage or bamboo shoots in a clay pot and cooked slowly over low heat.
How to eat it
Restaurants usually serve one meatball per bowl, in its broth. At braised-pork rice shops it is sold by the piece as an extra next to a bowl of rice. Four-joy meatballs come four to a plate, so check which one a menu means.
Around Taiwan
- Kaohsiung
- Nan Feng Braised Pork Rice (南豐魯肉飯) trades inside Lingya Market, the market that houses Ziqiang Night Market. It sells lion's head meatballs one at a time, and TVBS names them and the braised pork rice as the two things to order.
