eat, drink, men, women 飲食男女: xiao long bao 小籠包, potstickers 鍋貼, and pan fried pork buns 生煎包

Tuesday, January 29, 2019

xiao long bao 小籠包, potstickers 鍋貼, and pan fried pork buns 生煎包 - part 3

So my quest for learning to make these Shanghainese delights continues. All counted I have tried making 5 things this week. While Hunan savory braised pork belly 湖南紅燒肉 suggest it is a Hunan dish the truth is you can call it Shanghainese too as Shanghai, and many other provinces also have a basically identical dish.
I was all prepare to eat my own dog food with all these new tricks. No bad dog food really as all are delicious.

These are five dishes that I set out to make:

One thing that I didn't know is a piece of pork belly goes a long ways in yielding a lot of these delights. Today I realize I have to freeze some of the fillings or else it will goes bad before I am able to use them all.

Today I set out to try making xiao long bao 小籠包. The gelatin rendered from the pork skin had gelled in the refrigerator, and can be cut up into bits and added to the pork filling.

the pork belly skin was use to render the gelatin; I would only realize later that I should have pulverize the skin which would had yield more gelatin rather than throwing these away

gelatin in liquid form

gelatin has gelled in the fridge

Xiao long bao 小籠包 is one prime example of the genius of Chinese cuisines. Nothing is wasted and in this case a piece of pork belly yields the most interest steam bun all made with the humblest ingredients.

I divided the filling into two batches; one without vegetable for xiao long bao 小籠包, and the other with vegetable for making potstickers 鍋貼 and pan fried pork buns 生煎包

for one meal I made six pan fried pork buns 生煎包

I can make these quite well now and got the process down to an efficient routine; I can make the skin much thiner now

I remember when I was in Toronto eating with my relatives at Din Tai Fung 鼎泰豊 we ordered a plate of these pan fried pork buns 生煎包. It was the plate of food that all of us looked at each other speechless, and no one want to eat them. We all knew by the appearance the dough skin is too thick, and none of us want to be stuffed with all that starch. A few of us eventually venture into one, and some shared one between two persons, and we were right to be skeptic. Very underwhelming, especially in metropolitan Toronto where there are more Chinese expats than most cities. Yet this place always is jam packed that you have to wait to get in.

a sad looking plate of pan fried pork buns 生煎包 at Din Tai Fung 鼎泰豊 in Toronto

Then I tried making the first xiao long bao 小籠包 for testing; not the best looking bao

I didn't have any paper liner for bamboo steamer to prevent the delicate xiao long bao 小籠包 from sticking to the bamboo slats though I was hoping it wouldn't stick too bad

the test xiao long bao 小籠包 turned out good, but not great

I made three more after the test bao, but alas all three stuck the the bamboo slats quite badly, and separating them from the steamer inevitable cause some of the juice to leak. These three leaky xiao long bao 小籠包 were the only dog food I ate in my exercise. I resigned to sticking with potstickers 鍋貼, and pan fried pork buns 生煎包 until I buy some bamboo steamer paper liners.

more pork and vegetable fried buns 生煎肉菜包

With the last little bit of dough left I managed to eke out enough wrapper for making three potstickers 鍋貼. The wrapper skin was really thin. It turned out these three were the best potstickers 鍋貼 I made up to now. They tasted so much better with the least amount of dough. I used a little bit more oil to fry them and the browned bottoms tasted much better.

these three potstickers 鍋貼 were the best due to the thinest wrappers

One thought I have after all these experiments is among xiao long bao 小籠包, potstickers 鍋貼, and pan fried pork buns 生煎包, potsticker is the easiest to make and most rewarding. The filling has about 30 percent vegetable and I like that very much. The vegetable brings additional moisture and hence reduces the need for more pork fat making the potstickers less fattening. With the simple seam there is very little dough. On the contrary pan fried pork buns 生煎包 then to have more dough because of the increased surface area as well as the seam that resulted form squeezing the circumference of the wrapper together to form the bottom.

Each time I ate pan fried pork buns 生煎包 I always felt there were too much dough. Lastly, I feel scallion pancake 蔥油餅 is something I would only make occasionally due to the high carbohydrate.

Update Feb 7, 2019:
I have been scouring for photos of pan fried pork buns 生煎包 countless times, and finally I found these that are just like those in my childhood memory. They have the browned faces on both sides from being flipped like I did instead of only one side. Additionally these are fried in the traditional purpose made flat bottom steel pan that vendors used to make these as well as potstickers 鍋貼.

There is one with minced beef filling instead of pork. The one with beef has sweeten Chinese salted radish which gives the beef excellent contrast. I want to make the beef version soon.

here is a photo of how potstickers 鍋貼 are fried in the same flat bottom pan

There is one most delicious pan fried treat from childhood that I have not been able to find that were also sold in a neighborhood Shanghainese restaurant. More precisely in an alley. It is this ones in the photo that are coated with white sesame seeds. It as the most delicious crunchy outer skin. I had seen factory made ones at 99 Ranch Market but I didn't trust them to be any good. I think it is called Shanghai charcoal roasted biscuits上海燒餅. I am now sure it is roasted in a charcoal drum like oven so this is not something you can do at home unless you are hell bent with iron will.

I did a bit more search and found this blog post in Taiwan. This shop sells two versions, one sweet with red bean paste and a savory one with pork. Very often you will find a same dish or snack in Taiwan has altered from the original ones in Mainland China.

the charcoal drum oven