The Tastes and Textures of a Small-Town Treat

Beidou Township in Changhua County is one of the places where bawan originated. Bawan (bah-uân) in Taiwanese, or rouyuan in Mandarin, literally means “meatball,” but they are actually meat dumplings. Beidou was an important inland port in the Qing Dynasty. Goods moving north or south were transshipped here, bringing an abundance of dried foodstuffs into the area. Locals formed religious associ­ations dedicated to specific deities, and in the course of their activities they shared recipes for fenwan, dumplings made with sweet potato starch, which later developed into today’s bawan.

Bawan dough, filling, and sauce

The bawan made in Beidou and those made in Chang­hua City are both deep fried, but to different degrees. For Beidou bawan, after steaming the dumplings are placed in a deep fryer. The oil is heated only moderately, so that the bawan roll around gently until they are fully cooked, after which they are removed and pressed to drain the oil, leaving the outside skin smooth and glossy. But in Changhua City the oil is hotter and bubbles wildly, making the skin crispy.

In terms of appearance, Beidou bawan have finger marks on them, because when wrapping the stuffing in the skin, chefs will first press the dough into a mold, then add the stuffing, then more dough, and remove the bawan by hand before placing them in steamers. Meanwhile for Changhua City bawan, the filling is placed into a bowl and covered with dough, after which the bawan are steamed in their bowls and then removed using utensils.

Most Beidou bawan vendors use diced bamboo shoots in the filling. When bamboo shoots are in short supply, they switch to kohlrabi, which is likewise crispy. As for the pork, chefs prefer shoulder and leg meat because it has a firmer bite. After it is marinated and refrigerated, it is best used as filling the following day; this process makes the filling flavorful and not sticky.

The sauce is the essential finishing touch for bawan. Beidou bawan sauce has a rice milk base, with different spices added according to the chef’s preferences. For example, the shops Bawan Rui and Bawan Bin both add black bean sauce to their recipes, but the former also uses five-spice powder, onions, and garlic, while the latter adds ingredients like pepper and licorice. In both cases the sauce ends up with a rich flavor, which is one of the defining features of Beidou bawan.

Beidou bawan chefs first press the dough and filling into handheld molds, then deftly remove the completed bawan.

Beidou bawan are shaped like old-fashioned gold ingots.

Mushrooms are often used as an ingredient in bawan fillings.

Beidou’s “Bawan Street”

Beidou’s bawan shops have long been concentrated in the areas near the Dian’an Temple and the Earth God Temple. Many of the early proprietors were members of two prominent local clans, the Fans and the Yangs. Yan Jen Yu, a Beidou native who is an expert in Taiwan’s culinary culture, says the owners of these shops mostly came from the same deity associations. For example, on the second floor of Bawan Sheng there is still a shrine dedicated to the Three Mountain Kings. Association members would exchange experiences in making bawan and running a business.

From interviewing bawan shop owners in Beidou, Yan discovered that even before opening any eateries the Fan family had a tradition of making bawan. However, bawan back then included those with meat fillings and those with non-meat fillings. The latter were made with a mixture of bamboo shoots, spices, and sweet potato starch, formed into a ball by hand and then boiled in water to make a soup. Thus they were similar to the fenwan that were a local snack in Quanzhou, China. After the ancestors of local families came to Taiwan, they developed fenwan by adding pork and drizzling them with sauce, to arrive at the authentic Taiwanese snack we know today.

Thanks to Beidou’s role as a port in the Qing Dynasty and later as a transit hub under Japanese rule, Beidou bawan spread throughout Taiwan.

When cooking Beidou bawan the oil in the fryer does not bubble intensely; rather, the bawan appear to just be soaking in the oil.

Adjusting the types and proportions of starch and flour gives the skins of deep-fried bawan different degrees of crispiness.

From the bawan served in each locality you can get a glimpse of local history and the tastes of residents.

Bawan across Taiwan

Bawan have taken on different characteristics in different places, and are a topic that culinary writers never tire of. Writer Wang Hao-yi notes in his essay “When This Bawan Meets That Bawan” that the Ah Jia Bawan shop in Puli offers a unique approach for diners: The owner recommends that one first eat the skin of the bawan, leaving the filling and the sauce in the bowl, and then add the bone broth that the shop provides for free. Meanwhile, bawan makers in Pingtung County use a lot of long-grain rice milk in the skin, giving a whiter color; and after the bawan are steamed they are not deep fried, but are soaked in the braising stock so that the delicious fragrance permeates the skin.

In his Taste of Formosa, writer Jiao Tong observes that bawan fillings are mainly made from diced or shredded bamboo shoots, mushrooms, and onions, with Tainan bawan often also having added shrimp. The pork in the filling may be diced or shredded, as for example at the ­Changhua eatery Hot Bawan, which offers both versions. The sauce topping for deep-fried bawan is generally made from rice milk, with sugar and spices added after the rice is ground, whereas the sauce for steamed bawan is more often a lighter soy sauce or braising stock.

Chen Shu-hua, author of Changhua Snacks, grew up in Changhua. When she was small, bawan were not yet widely consumed in daily life, and she only ate them when she went shopping with her mother at the ­Lunar New Year. Slight adjustments in the ingredients of bawan skins and in the proportions used can produce very different textures. The shop Bawan Nan uses only sweet potato starch for the skin, making it almost transparent and giving it a subtle sweet potato aroma.

As for documentary records of bawan, Chen has discovered that in the Japanese colonial period Toshio Ikeda published an article on Taiwanese food in the journal Minzoku Taiwan (“Popular Customs of Taiwan”) in which he described the technique for making sweet potato starch that was used in the Bangka area of Taipei. Sweet potato was ground into a powder that was then placed in water, and after settling the starch was dried in the sun. Chen surmises that at the time people in rural communities in Taiwan were in the habit of making sweet potato starch, and it was against this background that bawan gradually emerged.

The filling in steamed bawan from Pingtung is mainly pork, and the bawan are soaked in the braising stock.

Donggang Zheng Zong Meatballs in Donggang, Pingtung County sells both steamed and deep-fried bawan.

These bawan are ready to be steamed.

Bawan techniques are part of history

For Taiwanese, the making of bawan is not just a skill—these dumplings are part of our history.

At 6 a.m. in the kitchen of Bawan Rui in Beidou, two chefs and the woman owner are skillfully pressing fried bamboo shoots and marinated pork into tin molds, ­finally covering them with a layer of dough, then deftly removing the complete bawan. One of the chefs says, “In the past this kind of mold had to be made to order, and chefs would use the same ones their entire lives.”

The kitchen is pervaded by the fragrance of five-spice powder and rice milk, while off to one side a machine is mixing and stirring dough in a pot that is being heated on a stove. This is the way to make skins with the right chewy texture. The third-generation owner, Fan Shih-hsien, learned from childhood how to make bawan from his father. He feels the key point is to get the right proportion of skin to filling, and to pick up the right amount of filling. After being wrapped, his bawan are steamed for 15 minutes and then cooled with an electric fan before being put in the freezer.

Each year when the Dajia Mazu Pilgrimage passes through Beidou, before enter­ing the temple the procession passes along Gong­qian Street. Bawan Rui used to be located right nearby, so starting from the first-­generation owner they would host a group of bicycle-­riding worshipers known as the Iron Horse Team with bawan, and over these many years this has become a tradition.

Another venerable bawan shop in Beidou, Bawan Bin, is located next to Provincial Highway 1, so it gets visited by a lot of famous people who take commemorative photos with the owner. One of the photos shows owner Chang Kai-wei providing bawan for a state banquet at the Presidential Office Building.

In the kitchen, Chang’s wife is wrapping bawan. She points to bottles of seasonings on a table and says, “We don’t use five-spice powder—we use licorice, which we grind ourselves.” Because her family runs a traditional Chinese medicine shop, she chose to use licorice to prepare the shop’s sauce. Its sweetness offsets the astrin­gency of the black beans in their sauce and leaves a sweet aftertaste. “A lot of people think it’s easy to wrap bawan, but knowing how to keep your hands relaxed when grabbing the dough is a skill in itself.”

Chang Kai-wei used to be a weightlifter when he was young, and though he is no longer in training he puts the same effort into trying to make perfect deep-fried bawan. He places a bowl of batter next to his fryer, because there are often cracks in the skin of frozen bawan, so before putting them in the fryer he uses a little batter to fill in the cracks to ensure the bawan do not go out of shape while frying. For Chang, the sense of achievement he gets when customers say his bawan are delicious is just as meaningful as his former sporting triumphs.

Chen Shu-hua’s initial motivation for writing Chang­hua Snacks was to seek out the connection between her birthplace and her life experiences by looking at the every­day cuisine of local families and the snacks served in her hometown. From the bawan of each place, one can get a glimpse of local history and residents’ tastes.

Each bawan is heir to the relationships among our forebears and their interactions with the environment, and is a testament to the skill involved in making contemporary Taiwanese snacks. Starting with a few simple ingredients, even a slight change will produce new textures and flavors. Making bawan is both a skill and a window on history.

At Ah Cai’s Changhua Bawan in Taipei, the owner adjusts the proportions of the dough ingredients so that the skin is not too crispy.

Bawan are often paired with four-herb soup.

Steamed bawan being made at Jiantan Bawan King in Taipei.