Everybody loves the sound of the dim sum cart coming around. There are buns, dumplings, sticky rice in a lotus leaf, rolls, chicken feet… Ok, maybe we’ll skip the chicken feet. One of my very favorite dim sum dishes is shumai.
Shumai, or siu mai, or shaomai (烧卖) are a type of dumpling where the filling pokes out of the top of a round cylinder with the wrapper surrounding it. The fillings you can find are as varied as the countries you find them in. Its origins are Cantonese, but you find them everywhere in Asian restaurants, regardless of what region they come from.
As a lover of Sichuan food, I make mine with pork, shrimp, and flavors that are essential to that style of cooking. Fermented broad bean paste with chili is the ultimate umami for Sichuan dishes. Baoning vinegar is the black vinegar of that region as well. These, combined with soy sauce and sesame oil, taste good with practically anything, especially this mixture of meats, cabbage, shitake, and aromatics.
Try this recipe and let us know how it worked out in the comments section!
Pork and Shrimp Shumai
Equipment
- Bamboo Steamer or Steamer Pot
Ingredients
- 1 lb ground pork
- 1/2 lb shrimp
- 1 cup nappa cabbage shredded
- 1 inch ginger minced
- 3-4 cloves garlic minced
- 1 scallion minced
- 8-10 (optional) shitaki mushrooms finely chopped
- 1 tbsp Sichuan fermented bean paste with chilli chopped
- 1 tbsp soy sauce
- 1 tbsp sesame oil
- 1 tsp Baoning vinegar
- 1 pkg round dumpling wrappers
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 egg beaten
Instructions
Chop the filling
- Chop up all the vegetables: the cabbage, ginger, garlic, scallion and mushrooms very finely and integrate them together
- Chop the shrimp until the pieces are very small, like a paste
- Chop the ground pork in the same way and add the shrimp
- Combine everything and integrate evenly, adding the beaten egg and salt
Prepare the sauce
- Chop up the bean paste on the cutting board to reduce the size of the whole beans and put in a small bowl. Add the soy sauce, vinegar, sesame oil and mix together.
- Add the sauce to the mixture and blend evenly together. Set aside for 10 minutes or wrap in plastic and put in the refrigerator for up to a day. You can prepare all of this ahead of time.
Fill and make the dumplings
- Set up your mixture, wrappers, and a small bowl of water for dipping your fingers.
- Take a wrapper and add a large spoonful of filling to the center, leaving about 1/4 inch of space to the edge.
- Wet your fingers, then wet the outside margin of the wrapper around the filling
Approach 1 for folding
- One way to make the dumpling is to make an OK sign with one hand and drop the middle of the dumpling in the center. Press down into the filling through the hole, allowing the sides to form around the sides. The top should be open, not covered
Approach 2 for folding
- The other way to fold is to make pleats, shaping the dumpling as you go. You might have to squeeze the pleats hard to get them to stick, depending on the wrapper dough.
Steam the dumplings
- After you have enough dumplings to fill your steamer, place some perforated parchment paper at the bottom of the steamer and arrange them so that they don't stick to each other.
- Steam for 8 minutes
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