Cooking: Soup Dumplings

Soup dumplings are near and dear to my heart. I grew up on them and loved it every single time. My family tired of waiting on lines to get to these delectably soup filled pork dumplings in restaurants so my mom found a store that sold them frozen in bulk. Bingo! They were good! Porky, savory, good! Unfortunately, they also broke very easily. The delicate dough never seemed to freeze properly. But we still went back and bought bags and bags of them. But one day, they closed and didn't give any notice of what would be to come. And that ended my supply of soup dumplings. It was back on the lines waiting for a tray of these steaming hot joys of life. As I grew up, I've become more and more adventurous in my cooking. And for some reason, I've decided to put it on myself to recreate many Chinese dishes that I grew up with. No recipe, no direction. Just from pure memory. Some were successes. Others, not so much. But one thing was for sure, I wanted to make soup dumplings.

You see, I'm an avid dumpling maker already. Every year, I'll sit down with a huge supply of marinated pork and different vegetables. I'd sit and wrap every single one, then freeze them individually. Then pack them into bags for long storage in the freezer. The supple would last me the year. It would take me hours to make it but it was worth it every single time. So this year, I challenged myself and looked into soup dumplings. Lucky for me that I actually found a couple of recipes to help me. The first recipe that I tried is from Serious Eats. I read it over and over again to make sure that I could pull off something like this. And it seemed doable. So I went and prepped the work (it took a few days). And on the day of trial, I invited the Feisty Foodie and AbnormousCheese to taste test. They happily obliged.

A few days before taste testing, I need to make the rich broth. I've head of people taking regular stock and adding gelatin and others using aspic. I wanted to make everything from scratch so I followed the Serious Eats recipe for the stock. First, I placed the chicken wings in a large stock pot.

Then I added the aromatics. I chopped up some green onions/scallions.

Here are some whole black peppercorns.

Ginger cut into smaller pieces.

And a nice slab of bacon. I couldn't find Chinese ham. In fact, I didn't even know what that was. But slab bacon is always easy to find. I cut it up so it fit into the pot.

Everything into the pot and filled with water.

I brought the mixture up to a rolling boil and lowered the temperature. I let it simmer away for hours. The recipe said 3 hours. I simmered it for 6. Why? I had added a lot more water and wanted to reduce it to something very rich.

When it was done, the wings had pretty much fallen apart. That's the way I wanted them. I strained the stock of the ingredients and fat. What I was left with was golden and rich. I let it cool overnight in the fridge and it naturally gelatinized. That's the way you want. That's the way you'll need it.

So here we are on the day of the taste test. I went and bought a bamboo steamer. Really traditional and most of all cheap. However, when you first but a steamer like this, there are a couple of steps that you should do before using it. First, clean it. Second, soak it overnight in a tub of water. I soaked mine in the sink. You want the fibers to be saturated. The next day, take it out and steak it empty. You want the bamboo to take it's final shape. This is only a one time thing. If you don't do these steps, the steamer may crack.

Another ingredient that you'll need is the napa cabbage. You could use perforated parchment paper but it's not the same for me. I like the cabbage.

Rip the outer leaves off the head of cabbage and line a tray of the steamer. Now lightly brush some oil onto it. I like using a very neutral oil like canola. The oil will help the dumplings from not sticking.

And now your meat. I used ground pork. Try to find fatty ground pork. The fat adds a nice touch to the soup element of the dumpling. To the pork, add your stock. As you can see, it is gelatinized. Mix well together. I like to make extra stock so that I can keep adding more if it needs it.

Once your filling is ready, make the dough which I personally think is the most difficult part of the whole process. To make the dough, add hot water to all purpose flour. Then knead until smooth.

Once the dough is ready, I shaped it into a log so that I could cut it into small pieces to be rolled out.

Here I am cutting the log up. I used a pastry cutter which turned out to be very useful.

Then I took a small dowel/rolling pin and rolled out the piece of dough. I found it easiest to use plenty of extra flour for dusting (counter, pin, and dough) and to roll it inside out and turning it constantly.

And here's my first try. Not too bad but I needed more practice. No problem. There was plenty of dough.

Getting it uniformly circular was pretty much next to impossible. But it didn't matter really. As long as it was somewhat like a circle, it worked. To this, I added a scoop of the pork and soup mixture to the middle. I was careful not to overstuff it.

Then slowly but surely I started the pleating. It took about 18 or so pleats to get all the way around.

When I was done pleated, there was a small hole in the top. I grabbed the pleats and twisted it slightly to close it.

And here's my first attempt. Kind of sloppy, isn't it? But not bad.

As I worked, they become neater and nicer. Like this one! Nice and uniform.

Once I finished making the first set of dumplings, I steamed them. I had the steamer ready and a hot pot of water boiling. I added the dumplings to the cabbage lined trays. Onto the pot and steam for just a few minutes.

The first set of dumplings were too soft and gummy. The dough was wrong. Also, I didn't think it was salty enough so I added some more soy sauce. As I worked through the day, I kneaded the dough more and tweaked the meat mixture. At the end, my last batch was just okay. The dough needed more work but the meat was fine. I also could have used more soup so I'm going to make another batch of rich stock.

Overall trial #1 was pretty successful. I was happy with the progress that I had made but I obviously needed more work. Lucky for me, I have enough ingredients for at least 2 more trials. I want to get to a point where the dough is thin and smooth and the soup is luxurious. Hopefully, I will get to this by trial #3.

Oh and a word of advice, this is a very labor intensive recipe. I stood pretty all day kneading dough and wrapping dumplings. I was fine but it's not for the easily frustrating kitchen individual. However, if you're adventurous and determined like me and willing to try and try again, please attempt it. Maybe you'll figure it out on the first time!

The Serious Eats recipe is below:

Soup Dumplings (Xiao Long Bao)
Posted by J. Kenji López-Alt, April 15, 2011

Ingredients
serves Serves 6 to 8, active time 1 hour, total time 12 hours

For the Broth:
3 pounds chicken backs or wings
1/2 pound chinese ham or slab bacon
6 scallions, white separated, greens roughly chopped
1-inch knob ginger
1 tablespoon white peppercorns
Kosher salt

For the Filling
1/3 pound ground pork
1/4 pound raw shrimp, peeled
2 teaspoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon XiaoShing wine
2 teaspoons sugar

For the Dough:
2 cups (10 ounces) all-purpose flour
1 cup boiling water

Napa cabbage leaves

Procedures
Combine chicken bones, ham, scallion whites, half of scallion greens, ginger, and white peppercorns in a saucepan and cover with cold water. Bring to a boil over high heat, remove to a simmer, and simmer for 2 1/2 hours. Strain broth, season to taste with salt, cover, and refrigerate until set into a semi-firm jelly, at least 8 hours.

Meanwhile, combine pork, shrimp, soy sauce, wine, sugar, 1 teaspoon salt, and remaining scallion greens in a food processor. Process until a fine paste is formed, about 12 to 15 one-second pulses. Refrigerate until ready to use.

Meanwhile, place flour in bowl of food processor. With machine running, slowly drizzle in water until cohesive dough is formed (you probably won't need all the water). All dough to ride around processor for 30 seconds. Form into a ball using floured hands and transfer to a bowl. Cover with a damp towel and let rest for at least 30 minutes.

When broth is gelled, transfer filling mixture to a bowl along with 1 cup of jellied broth (save the rest for another use). Beat or whisk it in until homogenous. Keep filling well chilled.

Divide dough into 4 sections, and each section into 10 small tablespoon-sized balls, making 40 balls total. On a well-floured work surface, roll each ball into a round 3 1/2- to 4-inches in diameter. Stack wrappers and keep under plastic until all of them are rolled out.

To form dumplings, place 1 tablespoon of filling in the center of a wrapper. Moisten the edges of the wrapper with a wet fingertip or a pastry brush. Pleat edges of the wrapper repeatedly, pinching the edge closed after each pleat until the entire dumpling is sealed. in a cinched purse shape. Pinch and twist top to seal. Transfer sealed dumplings to a lightly floured wooden or parchment-lined board.

Place a bamboo steamer over a wok with 2 inches of water. Place over medium high heat until simmering. line steamer with napa cabbage leaves and place dumplings directly on leaves. Steam until cooked through, about 5 minutes. Serve immediately, being careful not to break them.