These Curry Fish Balls are Hong Kong’s #1 Street Food

Bon Appétit

Bon Appétit meets Chef Lucas Sin in Hong Kong to try curry fish balls. This snack is one of Hong Kong’s defining street food snacks, and it’s becoming increasingly rare to find a shop handmaking them the traditional way. Fortunately, Lam Law Ping is keeping the craft alive at his shop, Tak Hing Fish Ball Company, and has even been dubbed the ‘Fish Ball King.’

Transcript

00:00So clean! Yummy! Welcome to Takheng Yudan, Takheng Fish Ball Company, where chef makes fresh fish

00:09balls every single day, which is hard to find in Hong Kong these days. And he's about to start the

00:14process, so let's see how he's doing it. Fish balls, traditionally, are kind of a way to preserve the

00:23fish. Because fish ball is an economic sort of food, it's always usually some type of fish that

00:29people are not going to eat whole. These days, it's mostly yellow-bellied croaker. Nice and silvery

00:35and quite small. Like, it's no bigger than the span of your hand, really. This fish is caught very,

00:41very fresh. You can see by the cleanliness of the gills, the brightness of the eyes, how it's shiny

00:46and not slimy. Just because this fish doesn't sell for as much per piece doesn't mean that the quality

00:52and the freshness of the fish is not there. Good ingredients make good food. This is the first step.

00:58Chef really insists on making this fish ball from scratch largely by hand. What's important

01:04about doing it by hand isn't just for some moral superiority, it's about control of the product.

01:10Step two, bai yu. This machine is specifically made for the production of ground fish. This is a different

01:19type of fish. This is yellow pike conger. It's a saltwater fish. Chef is lying it flat on this rotating,

01:28perforated surface. A hydraulic press presses the fish through those holes so that on the bottom,

01:36you get clean fish meat. And if you come around on the other side, as it exits the press, this arm is then

01:44pressing and smoothing out the fish onto this little cutter here so that as it's being raised, it comes

01:52out with a little bit of those pin bones still attached to the skin of the eel, but all of the flesh

02:00extracted for fish ball production. This becomes the second best seller here, which is fried fish skin

02:07with bones. What people see as waste is texture, it's flavor. I remember vividly the first time I had

02:14fish skin with bones in it. Changed my life. I've eaten fried fish skin my whole life as a Hong Konger,

02:20but the first time with bones on it, it just becomes a whole different thing. So these types of fish,

02:26they come from Southeast Asia where it's a little bit warmer. These are not fish in the harbors of Hong Kong.

02:31Dude, so fast. So fast. So clean. That is so cool.

02:41First cut, filling the fish to expose the spine. Second cut, he's removing that spine, but keeping

02:47the bones that come off of it attached. He's keeping all of those bones that come off the spine

02:53because he wants to get that crispy skin later. Dude, look. What the heck? So clean. So fast. This is a huge fish.

03:08Cool. So cool. The rest of this is going to get portioned out and then straight to the machine. The two

03:17fishes do different things. Chef says the eel gives it a little bit more smoothness and body.

03:24That's because of the fat percentage being higher in eel than in the croaker, where the croaker is going

03:29to give you that fresh fish flavor. Croaker is also going to provide that gelatinous texture. You can

03:35really see the buoyancy of this fish as compared to the eel, whereas the other fish provides more of that

03:40smoothness. After the fish comes out of the grinder, it's minced into a finer grind size, and then it goes

03:46inside of the mixer with the bag of ice so that it finally becomes that fine, smooth fish ball texture.

03:52Ice reduces the temperature. In Hong Kong, when it's really, really hot, you don't want your fish to

03:57get too hot because it will go bad. But more importantly, what that ice does is prevents the

04:02fish from being cooked. As it's being beaten, the friction that's being created by that paddle,

04:07by that mixing, will heat up the fish. Fish is so delicate that it'll cook at like 40 degrees

04:13Celsius. Imagine when you're making a custard with eggs and you don't temper the eggs properly,

04:17and it breaks apart and it scrambles. Even if you were to re-emulsify it, even if you were to like

04:23blend it more to get it smooth and you could add things to it so that it's settled, it still has a

04:27little bit of that grittiness. You want to prevent that grittiness. Oh, it's quite fast. That water from

04:33that ice melting is going to provide a little bit of smoothness and texture. The fish is being pressed up

04:37against each other to start building that myosin, a very specific type of protein that maintains the

04:44moisture inside of beaten meat products. Like really smooth meatballs or fish balls or sausages

04:50have that kind of bounce and snap because of this extraction of this myosin. It also protects and

04:56holds the protein with the fat so that everything's about layering air in between so that it can bounce.

05:04That's springiness. That's where the texture comes from. That's the smoothness and that's the retention

05:09of moisture as it's being cooked. Today, they're processing about 265 pounds of fish, all of which

05:16has gone into here. The fish itself, because it's a salt water fish, it has salinity. It has saltiness,

05:22but to accentuate it and give yourself a little bit of a larger margin of error, a little bit of white

05:26pepper to get rid of any traces of gaminess, as well as a little bit of potato starch. For 260

05:34pounds-ish, he put in maybe two cups, two and a half cups. It's a tiny amount of starch. After a couple

05:42of minutes of beating, you can see the air and you can see the lightness, the bounciness and the

05:46springiness being developed. This gets beaten for 30 minutes. This is where you screw it up. I've made

05:51fish balls before for all sorts of events and restaurants and it's hard to do.

05:59Super nice and smooth. You get a little bit of that gloss. It's cohesive. It's one mass.

06:05It goes into the machine.

06:14Oh, I see. Okay. The fish is getting piped, basically, into these little consistent balls.

06:30This is warm water. You have to get rid of some of that cold iciness. And the warm water helps set

06:36the fish balls just a little bit. It's not cooking it, but it's starting the protein denaturing process.

06:44I mean, it's so satisfying. This is like internet level comfort brain stuff.

06:53I guess it's a little bit like a poach. You're maintaining it at a relatively

06:57low, but still warm temperature so that that fish ball can set and shake. There must be thousands

07:06and thousands every day. So nice. So consistent. There are two primary types of fish balls in Hong

07:11Kong. The first are fried. Piped individually. They get set in warm water and they get deep fried so

07:16that that frying seals in the fish ball. Different textual experience. Second type of fish ball in Hong

07:21Hong Kong are the unfried types. And they're usually purchased in a tray like this, where the fish,

07:27after it's being beaten, gets squeezed through chef's hands and with a soup spoon, remarkably consistent,

07:34laying them out a little bit like a honeycomb, one by one. That fish ball, it'll get set in warm water

07:41and then sold to markets as one large piece. I've eaten this my whole life. Seeing it made in action,

07:48you really forget that there's a human being behind it. It's not just a machine.

07:53This is the fish skin. It's a huge wok of oil. It looks like they're frying pretty hot. Maybe

07:58375 Fahrenheit. It's a dry batter. There's no wet ingredients added. This is the standard issue fish

08:04skin that you'll get at fish ball shops, noodle shops all over Hong Kong. The bone-in kind that's much,

08:10much harder to find. Usually only places that make their own fish balls will have them. After the skin

08:15comes out of the fryer and is drained off, chef puts it in front of a fan just to cool down.

08:20Despite how alluring it is when it first comes out of the fryer, it's only crispy after it's fully

08:25cool. And once it's cool, boss is going to put it into bags to sell to customers. And they're primarily

08:30producing fish balls and fish cakes for people to buy to take home. But if you wanted to eat it here,

08:36you can get it in the storefront. They make it as a little snack, classic Hong Kong street style,

08:40fish balls with your choice of sauce. So the fish skin, the bone-in ones. The fried fish balls,

08:47this is the primary snack. This is 片頭, so fish cake cut into little triangles. And then 魚片,

08:54which is the whole cake. And it's all the same batter, different shapes. But different shapes

08:58mean different surface areas, different surface areas mean different textures. It's time. I'm hungry.

09:03Let's get some fish balls.

09:15Curry fish balls, tiny little cup, just a snack. Best way to eat this at home is in a noodle with broth,

09:21which you can buy here or like hot pot or something. But this is the way that Hong Kong people like to

09:25have it as a snack. Yummy. The sauce, standard issue, kind of like mild Hong Kong style curry,

09:36a little bit of like coconut flavor. But the fish ball itself is the main highlight. I would eat this

09:40even without the sauce. So I'm going to get another one. This is actually just a fish ball. Minimal

09:46seasoning. Earlier, Chef said the perfect fish ball is three things. 爽,滑,有油味。

09:52Soong, this is springy. Wa means smooth. 爽,滑,有油味, has plenty of fresh fish flavor.

10:03And when you eat it without any sauce on it, you can feel the waves of that fish flavor

10:11coming through. The only seasoning for a little bit of like piquancy, a little bit of spice

10:15is the white pepper. And the bounce on that fish ball is outstanding. When you bite into it,

10:21so consistent, uniform, nice and smooth. Fish balls are kind of commodities in Hong Kong.

10:26And as Hong Kong people take it for granted. But when it's really special,

10:30is when it's made by detail-oriented craftsmanship.

10:40Yum. So good. I could eat these all day. I really want to try those bone-in fish skins.

10:47This bag goes for 40 HKD, which is about five US dollars. That's kind of expensive, dude. The fish

10:54ball is also 10 Hong Kong dollars for three. That's kind of expensive. But what you're paying for is the

11:02craftsmanship. More importantly, you're paying for fresh fish. Look at this. Just gorgeous artistic curl.

11:09And see that texture? So this is the skin of the kangaroo eel, the back half of it. You see all that

11:15that spine. Those are the thicker ones here. And the really thin ones in between will be the pin bones.

11:20This is going to be a thicker crunch on top of the crisp of the skin side. Still warm. So good.

11:33This is the best thing here. You don't get this type of perfectly imperfect texture all the time.

11:40So that was duck peng yu dan. One way to eat this food is out of nostalgia. A better way to eat this

11:46food is out of just respect for the craft. This is what I like about Hong Kong. Even the simplest things,

11:52when you go to the right place, you can really see what it's really supposed to be. What a proper fish

11:58ball is like. It's quintessential Hong Kong.

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