Ba-wan

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Changhua-style ba-wan with sweet sauce and grated daikon radish

Ba-wan (traditional Chinese: 肉圓; pinyin: roù yuán; Wade-Giles: jou⁴-yüan²; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: bah-ôan; literally "meat circle") is a Taiwanese snack food, consisting of a 6-8 cm diameter disk-shaped translucent dough filled with a savory stuffing and served with a sweet and savory sauce. The stuffing varies widely according to different regions in Taiwan, but usually consists of a mixture of pork, bamboo shoots, and shiitake mushrooms. Changhua-style ba-wan is considered to be the "standard" ba-wan as it is the most famous and most widely imitated of all styles of ba-wan.

The term "ba-wan" is a non-standard romanization of the Taiwanese pronunciation of "肉圓", as well as "肉丸" (in Mandarin, roù wán; "meat pill/lump/knot"). In Lukang, ba-wan are known as "bah-hôe" (肉回; roù huí; lit. "meat returns") because they take on a block-like shape as embodied in the shape of 回.

The gelatinous dough is made of a combination of corn starch, sweet potato starch, and rice flour, which gives it its chewy, sticky, and gelatinous texture and a greyish translucent hue. Ba-wan are initially cooked by steaming; however, they may also be served after being deep fried to give them a "skin" or gently poached in oil to heat them without drying them out.

[edit] History

It is believed that ba-wan were first prepared in the Beidou township of Taiwan by a student by the name Fàn Wànjū (范萬居) as food for disaster relief during the late Qing dynasty (1644 – 1912), when the Beidou region was struck by heavy floods. Since then, ba-wan had spread to different regions of Taiwan and is now considered by many as a national food.