Wanted to share this before the Chinese New Year as they look really auspicious as a dish for the festive. Not exactly a recipe to begin with as all the ingredients are ready-made but the creativity of putting them all together makes it a really delightful dish for sharing especially during the reunion dinner.
For this, I used Lion Dance brand Bao Xin Wan meatballs which has a juicy meat center filling before wrapping in popiah skin and tying them with pandan leaf knots before deep frying to a crispy golden brown hue.
All it takes are just 4 simple ingredients to make these auspicious looking “money bags”. It’s crispy on the outside, chewy on the interior and finally biting into a juicy and savoury center filling which turns out to be surprisingly good. You can always replace the meatballs with the normal ones without any filling which I believe will turn out to be equally awesome as well. But for this, I do strongly recommend these ones with a center filling as you can literally have the 3 layers of texture all in a single “money bag”. Believed this will be a hit with the kids as well as it looks tempting and delicious enough to entice the little ones.
Meatballs “Money Bags”
Course: StarterCuisine: ChineseDifficulty: Easy4
servings30
minutes30
minutesIngredients
1 pack Lion Dance Brand Original Flavour Bao Xin Wan Meatballs
9 pcs popiah skin, 12.5cm x 12.5cm
Few pcs of long pandan leaves
Some cooking oil
Directions
- Boil some water and blanch the pandan leaves till soften. Tear the pandan leaves into thin strips and set aside.
- Heat up some water and cook the meatballs till they float onto the surface of the water. Drain away the water and pat them dry with paper towels.
- Wrap each meatball in the popiah skin and fold up the 4 corners to wrap it it. Tie it securely with a pandan leaf strip. If it’s long enough, you can also tie it as a ribbon. Continue till all are finished.
- Then heat up some cooking oil. Insert chopsticks into the hot oil and if bubbles sizzle all around the chopsticks, the oil is ready for deep frying.
- Deep fry the wrapped meatballs in small batches to ensure the temperature of the hot oil stays constant. This also ensure every piece gets deep fried till evenly browned.
- When done, drain on paper towels to soak up excess oil and serve hot immediately to enjoy.
Notes
- Blanching the pandan leaves in hot water before using ensures the leaves are softened and will not break easily when tying.
- Cooking the meatballs before using also ensures they get cooked up first, otherwise it would take a longer time to deep fry and cook the interior of the filling till doneness but the exterior of the popiah skin will be darken / burnt by then.
