Here’s more Taiwanese street food for you all today. Do you love Taiwanese meatballs but can’t make them bouncy at home? These can be made with pork or beef mince but we have chosen to make pork ones in this recipe as they are the most popular. Please try Joanne’s recipe, and method in the video embedded below, to make the tastiest, bounciest Taiwanese Gong Wan 自製貢丸 – with all natural ingredients!
Bouncy Meatballs 自製貢丸 (Taiwan Gong Wan) ingredients
- 750g pork mince, frozen
- half tbsp salt
- 1 egg white
- 1tbsp corn flour
- grated ginger
- 4x Chinese mushroom
- Chinese celery
- 1.5 tbsp sugar
- spring onion
- half tsp white pepper
- half tsp fish powder
- a splash of rice wine
- 3 quarter tsp baking powder
Please get your pork mince ready with the following method: put the mince in a plastic bag and flatten it to about 1cm thick. You can see ours in the ingredients picture above with the egg on top of it. Then you break it up into small pieces before putting it in your chopper or blender. We had to chop/blend a third at a time as the machine isn’t so powerful. Do that until the mince meat changes from pink to light pink/white. This is very important to make your meatballs bouncy.
The above ingredients make quite a lot of Gong Wan, we had to cook them in to batches. When you’ve finished you can use them for the wonderful Gong Wan soup, like Joanne does at the end of the video. Please watch the video and see how bouncy these meatballs are!
How to make Bouncy Meatballs 自製貢丸 (Taiwan Gong Wan), cooking video
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13 comments
joseph says:
Oct 6, 2015
Thank you so much of sharing your recipes. As a Canadian who went to Taiwan and wanted to try to cook some of the great food I had I found your website to be the best. I made a lot of dishes using your recipes. 謝謝你們。
jj.lymm says:
Oct 11, 2015
Great to hear your found us Joseph! Thanks for the compliment, I aim to show all English speakers the secrets behind Taiwanese cooking, recipes and street foods!
STEFFEN says:
Oct 7, 2015
Hi Joanne,
thanks a lot for yet another great looking recipe of yours. I love your soups and recently have made the TW sesame wine chicken soup (mayo tsee ??) and for preparing it I went to the Asia Supermarket to get a refill on my Michiu and the lady there said it is about the right time for the sesame wine chicken soup. Anyway, I will make this bouncy meat ball soup soon, for sure. Thanks again and keep sharing your recipes !!
All the best,
Steffen (from Germany)
jj.lymm says:
Oct 11, 2015
Yes, she’s right. As winter creeps up on us its a good time to make both the sesame wine chicken soup and these bouncy meatballs. We made many more meatballs this weekend again – about 400 !!! because I had a big party for Taiwan 10-10 celebrations 🙂
STEFFEN says:
Nov 6, 2015
Hi Joanne,
as promised I tried out your recipe of the bouncy meatballs: fantastic!!!!
Due to what I had left in the kitchen I changed a bit the ingredients to that degree that I didn’t used Chinese mushrooms, but the white beech mushrooms (Shimeji). I chopped them very finely as well as some spring onions, Chinese celery, ginger and mixed all with the spices and the half frozen minced pork …. The rest of the Shimeji I kept in total along with some coriander, stripes of carrot and celery for going into the soup itself. It worked out greatly. My Mom liked it a lot, too. So, this will be yet another of my (your) favourite soups, for sure.
Keep sharing your recipes and all the best,
Steffen (from Germany)
jj.lymm says:
Nov 8, 2015
Great to hear my bouncy meatballs bounced well in Germany. Before I found this method I tried many different ways to get them bouncy, so I’ve very happy too. They are very traditional and popular in Taiwan. Stay tuned for lots more recipes!~
Lynn says:
Nov 9, 2015
I’ve been craving for this food since i left taiwan 15 yrs ago, thanks i can now cook my favorite gongwan adobo.
jj.lymm says:
Nov 9, 2015
I’m very happy to hear this is so useful for you! Good luck with your cooking, come back again!
STEFFEN says:
Nov 27, 2016
Hi Joanne,
just checked out your fish ball recipe on your youtube channel. Somewhat similar to these bouncy meatballs here. I am thinking about a little Taiwanese New Year lunch for some friends on coming January 28 and now that I have seen the video about the fish ball soup I am not sure which one to choose. Maybe I should do them both, the meatball and the fishball soup and the fried fish ball you did additionally as the first course, then continuing as second course with some water spinach fried with garlic, chilli, tiger shrimp and fermented tofu sauce on top or without the shrimp, but then some steamed fish along. Or instead (or yet additionally) the steamed aubergine salat. The main course will most likely have to be the three cup chicken (as I promised that one my friends) … or some other of your grand recipes. We’ll see
🙂
Best and keep sharing your recipes,
Steffen (from Germany)
Edward says:
Dec 20, 2016
I already did it but my meatball was not that bounce and elastic that had to be. I have no idea which step i have done wrong. Can you give me any suggestion?
mark says:
Mar 13, 2017
Try blending the meatball mixture for a longer time Edward. It should get very white over time.
The Curious Case of Q - Roads & Kingdoms says:
May 3, 2017
[…] given a layer of Q thanks to tapioca in the wrapper. Or Taiwanese pork meatballs, sometimes called bouncy meatballs, entirely different from their tender Italian counterparts: a gently seasoned paste of ice-cold […]
The Curious Case of Q | Bluzio says:
May 3, 2017
[…] given a layer of Q thanks to tapioca in the wrapper. Or Taiwanese pork meatballs, sometimes called bouncy meatballs, entirely different from their tender Italian counterparts: a gently seasoned paste of ice-cold […]