After my good friend Han Zhang introduced me Lion's Head meatballs at Yaso Tangbao in Downtown Brooklyn, I decided that I had to figure out how to cook these. It took me nearly a year before I got around to doing so, but I finally got the chance to make them with Liz Liang when visiting the Washington, D.C. area.

We used the recipe How to Make Shanghai Lion's Head Meatballs from Serious Eats. Fortunately, it doesn't take that long, so we didn't miss out on too many Pokémon.

Sizzling Lion's head meatballs

Overall, I found it to be a very good recipe, but the proportion of meat and noodles could be adjusted. The woman that made it lives in some strange world where 12 ounces of ground pork feeds 4. We ended up using a little over 2 pounds of ground pork, which resulted in 10 huge meatballs, each about 2.5 inches in diameter. You could double the vermicelli, too, but I like a high meat-to-noodle ratio. The water chestnuts were an interesting twist that might not be for everyone, but they add a nice crunchy texture to the meatballs.

For dessert, Liz was kind enough to make us some blueberry bread pudding, too!

I only helped make the custard. The recipe is blueberry bread and butter pudding. I thought it turned out great, and I like how it wasn't it all that sweet.

Anyway, there's only a week left until I move to Seattle. I'll be saying my goodbyes to Philly soon.