Ba Wan is a steamed or fried ball made of rice flour, corn starch and sweet potato and stuffed with meat, mainly port or beef. The skin of ba wan recipes is made of soft, sticky and gelatinous dough while the stuffing is savory in taste mostly comprising of pork, bamboo shoots and mushrooms. Ba wan is served hot topped with sweet and savory sauces as evening snacks or as appetizers. While it is a common practice to serve steam the dish, it is often fried in oil to replace the sogginess with a crunchy feel. The Changua-style ba-wans are considered to be the most popular ones on the streets of Taiwan.
Ba wan is a cuisine of Taiwan. It was first initiated by a Taiwanese student, Fan Wanju during the Qing dynasty between 1644 and 1912. Wanju has prepared this dish as a disaster relief food the entire Beidou region was completely flooded. Since then it became popular in all regions of the country soon and eventually became the national food of the country.
Ba wan requires ingredients like rice flour, sweet potato flour, potato flour and water for the envelope and scallions, mushrooms, bamboo shoots, shrimps and soya sauce for the fillings. The covering is made by mixing all the flours with water and cooking thoroughly. For preparing the ba wan filling, scallions and mushrooms are sautéed in oil followed by the cooking of other ingredients until the meat is properly cooked. Soya sauce, salt and pepper are ten added. For preparing ba wan recipes, every piece of dough, placed on a cabbage leaf, should be filled with shrimp, mushroom and a bit of bamboo. Once the filling is pushed inside, the dough is covered with another small portion of dough on top. With wet fingers, the edges are then put together and the bawans are then steamed in a typical multi-layer bamboo steamer. In the absence of such equipment, a normal steamer can also be used.
They are ideally served hot with soups simply as a starter or as a snacks item along with sweet and savory sauces.
A ba wan is nutritional except for those watching either due to its content of meat, potato and rice flour which either contain carbohydrates or starch.