Bing’s Dumpling (Fremont)

[hyperbowler]

Bing’s Dumplings specializes in noodles and dumplings and is located in the same Ranch 99 shopping center as Chongqing Xiao Mian. The owner is from Shandong and a chef is from Shanghai.

You can hear a chef thumping away as he hand-pulls noodles. They’re half a centimeter wide, long and have a lot of chewy bounce. I found the base of their Lanzhou style soup to be lacking in intensity. I enjoyed, and much preferred, their version of Zha Jiang mian, which was topped with a brown fermented bean, meat and tofu sauce and served with cucumbers and blanched (yes! I hate raw) bean sprouts.

Xiao Long bao are very good. Well proportioned and full of soup. So large I wish I hadn’t popped an entire one in my mouth.

Pot stickers are the long, open ended variety. I’m not familiar with this style, so don’t have a basis of comparison. My impression was that the pork wasn’t especially juicy, and there’s a lot of dough.

[tm.tm (Therese)]

I’m guessing your typo meant to say the pork wasn’t juicy in the open-ended dumplings. This has been my impression of these sorts of dumplings, even when well-made (typically with a very thin dough). The picture above look to be egregiously poorly cooked–the dough part looks dried out and perhaps not steamed long enough.
I am curious what factors make a good version of this variety, as I’ve heard people around these parts express a preference for them.

[hyperbowler]

That’s right—- the pork wasn’t juicy, the dough was too hard on the bottom, and the sides weren’t wet enough. It was as if there wasn’t enough water in the pan (and typo fixed