A special dumpling filled with ground pork and soup. Be careful when biting into one! The soup inside is hot and can easily burst out if you are not careful.

小籠包

Method: stovetop

Difficulty: low

Estimated Prep Time: overnight

Estimated Cook Time: 2 hours

Servings: 2

Ingredients

• Dumpling wrapper
  • 5.25 ounces (150 grams) of medium gluten flour
  • 5.5 tablespoons (80 ml) of boiling water
• meat jelly (this is how the soup gets into the dumpling)
  • 1.5 cups (350 ml) of meat broth (chicken broth or pork broth or anything else. can use prepackaged liquid broth or create your own with, say, chicken stock cubes or ham stock cubes.)
  • 1 tablespoon of gelatin powder (魚膠粉)
• ginger scallion water
  • 0.7 ounces (20 grams) of ginger
  • 0.7 ounces (20 grams) of shallots
  • 4 tablespoons (60 ml) of boiling water
• 0.5 ounces (300 grams) of minced pork (ideally with 1/3 of it being fat)
• 1 teaspoon of salt
• 0.5 teaspoon of white pepper
• 2 teaspoons of light soy sauce
• 1 chicken egg
• 1 teaspoon of sesame oil

Instructions

• First, let's prepare the meat jelly. Add the meat broth into a pot and bring to a boil. Then add the gelatin powder and mix well. Pour the mixture into a bowl or rectangular pan and let cool to room temperature. Afterwards, place the container into the refrigerator and allow to solidify overnight into a jelly. Remember, xiao long bao dumplings are essentially soup dumplings in that they contain soup. How does that soup get in there? This meat jelly will melt back into broth during the final steps when we steam the dumplings.
• After waiting overnight, we can proceed onwards. Finely dice the ginger and shallots. Prepare the ginger scallion water by mixing the ginger, shallots, and boiling water in a bowl. Allow to cool to room temperature, then use a sieve to keep only the liquid. Discard the ginger and shallot solids.
• While waiting for the ginger scallion water to cool, let's start preparing the filling. Add the minced pork into a bowl, add salt, then mix well.
• Add white pepper and light soy sauce to the bowl with the pork and mix again.
• Take the ginger scallion water and slowly pour it into the bowl with the pork while continually mixing. This helps to ensure the water is evenly distributed.
• Beat the egg in a separate bowl, then add to the bowl with the pork while continually mixing. Again, this helps to make sure the egg is evenly distributed.
• Add the sesame oil and mix again for around 10 minutes.
• Take the meat jelly from step 1 out of its container, place on a cutting board, and dice in small cubes.
• Add the meat jelly into the bowl with the pork and mix well. Afterwards, cover the bowl and place into the refrigerator for 1 hour to marinade.
• Let's now move onto preparing the dumpling wrapper. Add flour and boiling water while continually stirring. Once all the water has been added and has cooled enough to make it safe to handle, knead the dough for 5 minutes. Allow dough to rest 1 hour.
• Roll the dough into a long rod shape, then slice into roughly 0.35 oz (10 gram) pieces.
• Now take each piece of dough and flatten into roughly 4 inch diameter circles. Make sure the dough doesn't end up too thin though. We recommend sprinkling some flour onto your surface (and your rolling pin, if you're using one) so that the dough doesn't end up sticking to everything.
• Take the filling out of the refrigerator and fill each dumpling wrapper with the filling. Make sure each dumpling contains little bits of the meat jelly so that each dumpling ends up containing some soup. Close the dumpling wrapper around the filling by pinching and folding along the edge of the wrapper onto itself, bit by bit, all around the filling until the filling is completely enclosed by the wrapper. Finally pinch the top of the dumpling to make sure it is fully closed.
• Place the xiao long bao dumplings into a steamer and steam on high heat for 10 minutes. We recommend lining your steamer with hole punched baking paper so that the dumplings do not stick to your steamer and are easier to pick up afterwards. Traditionally, a bamboo steamer placed over a pot of boiling water would be used. However, if you don't have one, you can also just use any kind of metal rack as a tray to hold the dumplings above some boiling water. Make sure to cover the pot or steamer so that the dumplings really bake in the steam.
• Your xiao long bao dumplings should now be all set to serve!

Bon Appétit!

Chiu Chao Style Dumpling

Shrimp and Chive Dumplings

Shrimp Dumpling

Siu Mai (Shumai)