Thursday, October 20, 2005

Xiaolongbao, Shanghai

When you say Shanghai, one of the first things that people may think about is Shanghai Xiaolongbao or in literally is buns in the basket; it may be Chinese dumpling for some peoples. Shanghai Xiaolongbao is very famous in Shanghai and also spread out oversea include Thailand, we often see Shanghai Xiaolongbao restaurant in the departments store and in commercial street as Silom Road, Bangkok.

XiaolongbaoShanghai Xiaolongbao is something must try if you visit Shanghai; Xiaolongbao is the quintessential Shanghai snack. Actually these little buns were supposedly invented in the village of Nanxiang, and spread out around now Nanxiang is a suburb of Shanghai.

The distinctive point of Xiaolongbao is soup inside which is very traditional Chinese soup taste. Let me show you how to cook Xiaolongbao by yourself so that you can try…

How to cook your Xiaolongbao

At first prepare the ingredients and following

For wrapper

High gluten flour 3/4 cup
Water 1/3 cup less 1 tablespoon
Plain flour 1/3 cup
Boiling water 1/4 cup
Flour for dusting 2 teaspoons oil

For soup

Skin of pork 180 grams
Chicken breast 225 grams
Pork 140 grams
Chinese ham 60 grams
Scallion 1
Ginger 2 slices
Chinese rice wine as you like
Salt as you like

For filling

Ground pork 285 grams
Light soy sauce 2 tablespoons
Salt 1/4 teaspoon
Ginger and scallion water 1 tablespoon
Pepper as you like
Sugar as you like
Sesame oil 2 teaspoons
Chinese rice wine 2 teaspoons

Making the soup

(For 2 cups. use only one)
1. Wash and clean the pork skin then parboil it with the chicken breast and ham in boiling water.
2. Prepare 6 cups of water in a saucepan with all of the meats.
3. Put ginger and scallion and leave it until boil.
4. Decrease heat and stew until pork skin is soft, and only 2cups of liquid remains then strain and reserve the liquid keeping the pork skin.
5. Dice and save pork skin the whiz the pork skin and liquid in a blender till milky.
6. Whiz the pork skin and Season with salt and leave to cool. Take it before it becomes gelatinize.

Preparing the Filling

1. Put the ground pork into a mixing bowl then add light soy sauce and salt.
2. Mix with chopstick or wooden spoon continuously in one only direction.
3. Add the rest of the ingredients and continue to mix in the same direction until sticky.
4. Pour one cup of the prepared soups gradually, mix thoroughly with the pork.
5. Wrap in cling film and put in the refrigerator.

Preparing the wrapper

(For 40 wrappers)
1. Mix the 3/4 cups of high gluten flour and 1/3 cup less one tablespoon less water until it resembles bread crumbs in a large mixing bowl then knead into dough.
2. Add the plain four into a mixing bowl.
3. Boil 1/4 cup of water in a small saucepan.
4. Add the 1/3 cup plain flour then move the saucepan away from the flame and continue stirring the flour vigorously with a wooden spoon.
5. Leave it until cool then kneading together with the gluten flour dough prepared earlier.
6. After finish kneading cover it with clean damp cloth and leave it for 4 hours.

Forming the dumplings

1. On the work top put 2 teaspoons of oil and put the dough on top then knead for a little while.
2. Cut the dough into 4 quarters, divide a quarter into a 20mm cylinder then divide again the cylinder into 10 pieces.
3. Roll each piece into round shape then flatten with the your palm into a disk
4. Use a rolling pin to roll the disk out forming a 60mm disk let the edges thinner than the center.
5. Make a well with you thumb and first finger and drape the disk over.
6. Let it sag in the middle to form a recess for the filling.
7. Put 2 teaspoons of filling.
8. Gather the edge of wrapper carefully then make folds and hold on to them until fully gathered.
9. In traditional Chinese they can make 18 fold the trick is do not let your finger touch the filling while doing wrapping otherwise it’s going to be a mess then do the same for the rest.

Final step Steaming

1. Cut out 10 cabbage and leave it in the disk or you can use thin slices of carrot and stick one piece to the bottom of each dumpling.
2. Put all of the dumplings into a 200mm bamboo steamer.
3. Rolling boil water in a large saucepan or wok.
4. Sit the Steamer on a rack over the boiling water, close the lid and steam for seven minutes.
5. The dumpling is done when the filling feels firm to the touch.
6. Serve with a small dish of thinly shredded ginger in vinegar.
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1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thank you for the recipe! I'm just returned from Shanghai where I've tasted several times the delicoius Xiaolongbao... yum!!!!
With your recipe I'll try to make them on my own... I hope to succeed:-)

9:32 PM  

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