Dumpling Atlas · Starter
Xiao Long Bao
- Advanced
- 1 h 35 m
- roughly 3 of 4 for cost
Leads with toasted, nutty warmth throughout, aromatics blooming from the first bite, on a rich, rounded finish.
Ingredients
- 400g pork skin, scraped clean of back fat
- 600g chicken wings, chopped
- 1.6L water
- 30g ginger, sliced
- 40g spring onion
- 250g plain flour
- 125g water at 40C (104F)
- 3g salt
- 300g pork belly and shoulder, minced
- 20g light soy sauce
- 12g Shaoxing wine
- 8g sugar
- 1g ground white pepper
- 10g toasted sesame oil
- Fine ginger julienne and Chinkiang vinegar, to serve
Equipment
Parchment
The skills inside
Pleating dumplingsSteaming: basket, leaf and lidThe bare simmer: holding liquid below the boilSalted water & the float testBlanching & shockingStraining & passing through a sieveKnife cuts: dice, julienne, biasResting dough: the pause that does the workThe wobble & the skewer: testing a bake
The words inside
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · soy · sesame · alcohol
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Blanch the pork skin and wings 3 minutes and rinse, then simmer with the 1.6L water, ginger and spring onion at a bare tremble for 3 hours. Strain and chill overnight: it must set firm enough to cut in clean cubes, with no wobble. 3 min
- Dice 300g of the set aspic into 5mm cubes and keep it cold. Beat soy, wine, sugar, pepper and sesame oil into the pork until sticky, fold the aspic through at the last moment, and refrigerate.
- Knead flour, salt and the warm water 8 minutes to a smooth firm dough, rest 30 minutes, then roll 10g pieces into 8cm rounds, thin at the rim and noticeably thick at the centre. 8 min
- Fill with 20g and gather 16 to 18 pleats around the rim with your thumb, twisting the last pleat closed. Keep the seam dry: a floured rim will not weld.
- Steam over a hard boil on oiled parchment for 8 minutes, until the skin is translucent and the soup audibly swims when you nudge the basket. 8 min
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Pleating dumplings 8 recipes
- The seam is closed along its whole length with no gap at either end of the pleat run: hold one up to the light and no filling shows through the join. A dumpling that opens in the water was sealed against a wet or floured rim.
- The rim is clean and dry where it meets itself. Filling smeared onto the sealing edge is the single most common cause of a burst, and it cannot be wiped off once the dough has taken it up.
- The pleats are even in size and count across the batch, so every piece holds the same weight of filling and cooks in the same time. A tray that ranges from eight folds to eighteen will not finish together.
- The wrapper is thicker at the centre than at the rim, so the base carries the filling without tearing while the pleated edge stays fine enough to eat. A disc rolled evenly flat splits at the bottom.
- It stands up on its own base without slumping, and the pleats still read as pleats after cooking rather than having relaxed into a smooth seam.
Where it goes wrong The rim was wet, floured or smeared with filling, so the seal never took: the dumpling opens in the pot, the filling leaves, and what surfaces is a slack empty wrapper in cloudy water. Uneven pleat counts across a tray compound it, because the batch stops finishing at the same moment.
Resting dough: the pause that does the work 71 recipes
- It actually rested, covered, for the time stated, not cut short because the rest of the schedule was tight.
- It rolls and shapes without fighting: it stays where it is put, and it does not spring back or shrink on the bench between passes.
- The surface is smooth and supple rather than dry, cracked, or skinned over.
- It is at the temperature the next step needs: cold where the fat must stay solid, cool and relaxed where it must be rolled thin.
- Baked, it holds the dimensions it was shaped to rather than shrinking back from the edges of the tin or the rim of the dish.
Where it goes wrong The rest was skipped or shortened, so the gluten was still tight: the dough fought the pin and sprang back thick and uneven, then shrank down the sides of the tin in the oven.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Riesling or Grenache
- Also Right
- Cru Beaujolais
- From the Taps
- Farmhouse saison
- Zero-Proof
- Cloudy apple juice, chilled
Pork loves fruit and gentle sweetness: orchard-note whites and low-tannin reds flatter it where heavy oak flattens.
Saved on this device and kept across visits: export from My Menu to move them.