Putian Folk Snacks: The Origin of Red Balls

Red ball is one of the traditional snacks of Han nationality in China, and it is a Chinese New Year food. Most southern families will eat this snack during the Spring Festival. The red ball originated in Putian, Fujian. So do you know the origin of this famous red ball? In this issue, I will take you to the snack culture encyclopedia to learn about the origin of the red group.

Pujiang Wu's recipe for cooking sand balls: "Sand balls are boiled into red beans or mung beans, wrapped in raw glutinous rice flour, made into big balls, or steamed or boiled in soup." The raw materials and methods of steaming sand balls are the same as those of red balls. Only the red ball was printed as a crown with a big red on the surface. Mr MONG talked about "Chengsha jiaozi" in Dongjiaolou Street, Menglu, Tokyo, which belongs to "after-dinner diet".

At present, there are still sand fillings in northern China, such as Beijing sand bags. The method of "sand" filling the heart is to cook and mash red beans or red beans and add sugar. Nowadays, there are three kinds of red ball stuffing in Puxian: mung bean, glutinous rice and dried sweet potato, but the mainstream is mung bean (as the saying goes, "red ball mung bean stuffing"), which can be kneaded into a ball by boiling mung bean and sugar. This is the same as the sand mass in the lake.

In addition to the Chinese New Year, only major festivals such as getting married and thanking heaven and earth do this. In this case, red balls are not only gifts, but also gifts, such as weddings, weddings, celebrations and so on. When the relatives and friends who congratulate you leave, they should send one or two red balls as a thank you, and the recipients also regard it as auspicious.

Red ball is not only polite, but also a delicious snack. Not only sweet, but also fragrant, especially the red balls filled with glutinous rice or glutinous rice and mung beans are more fragrant and soft. The surface of the cooled red dough is hard, but it can be softened by a little heating, and the taste is still very good.

The Spring Festival is a festival to bid farewell to the old and welcome the new. No matter how prosperous the life in the past year was, or how unsatisfactory it was on the whole, we all hope that the next year will be good. So everyone wants to have good luck. "Red" is a symbol of good luck, such as putting up Spring Festival couplets, hanging red lights and wearing red clothes. Of course, the offerings should be red and round, which means that the whole family is round and round and prosperous.