Bakso or baso is Indonesian meatball or meat paste made from beef surimi and is similar in texture to the Chinese beef ball, fish ball, or pork ball.[1] Bakso is commonly made from beef with a small quantity of tapioca flour, however bakso can also be made from other ingredients, such as chicken, fish, or shrimp. Bakso are usually served in a bowl of beef broth, with yellow noodles, bihun (rice vermicelli), salted vegetables, tofu, egg (wrapped within bakso), Chinese green cabbage, bean sprout, siomay or steamed meat dumpling, and crisp wonton, sprinkled with fried shallots and celery. Bakso can be found all across Indonesia; from the traveling cart street vendors to restaurants. Today various types of ready to cook bakso also available as frozen food commonly sold in supermarkets in Indonesia. Slices of bakso often used and mixed as compliments in mi goreng, nasi goreng, or cap cai recipes.
Unlike other meatball recipes, bakso has a consistent firm, dense, homogeneous texture due to the polymerization of myosin in the beef surimi.
Origin

The name Bakso originated from bak-so (肉酥, Pe̍h-ōe-jī: bah-so·), the Hokkien pronunciation for "shredded meat" (Rousong). This suggests that bakso has Indonesian Chinese cuisine origin.[2] Today most of the bakso vendors are Javanese from Wonogiri (a town near Solo) and Malang. Bakso Solo and Bakso Malang are the most popular variant; the name comes from the city it comes from, Solo in Central Java and Malang in East Java. In Malang, Bakso Bakar (roasted bakso) is also popular. As most Indonesians are muslim, generally Bakso is made from beef or is mixed with chicken.
Variations

Bakso urat: bakso filled with tendons and coarse meat
Bakso bola tenis or bakso telur: tennis ball sized bakso with boiled chicken egg wrapped inside
Bakso gepeng: flat bakso
Bakso ikan: fish bakso (fish ball)
Bakso udang: shrimp bakso
Bakso Malang: A bowl of bakso dish from Malang city, East Java; complete with noodle, tofu, siomay and fried wonton
Bakso keju: new recipe bakso filled with cheese
Health issue

In Indonesia, borax often added into beef surimi mixture in order to preserve the produced bakso also to made bakso more chewy (from borax induced myosin cross-linking) with less usage of mdat.[3] As the result, bakso often listed by the Indonesian Food and Drug Administration as an unhealthy foodstuff. The country's Directorate of Consumer Protection warns of the risk of liver cancer with high consumption over a period of 5–10 years.[4] As the result frozen bakso being sold at supermarkets and also traditional markets in Indonesia is required to be borax free.