It took many tries and different recipes before I felt comfortable making xiao long bao. My first batch in 1999 were 100% inedible. My last batch, in 2010, were 80% leak free. My expectations for Dunlop’s Shanghai Pot Stickers, aka sheng jian mantou or sheng jian bao (SJB), were low and I promised myself if anything was remotely edible I would consider it a success and a learning experience.
SJB are traditionally pleat side up pork buns and not too juicy, and the ones popular in Shanghai right now are pleat down, and filled with spoonfuls of soup. Dunlop’s recipe uses a total of 4 oz of gelatinized soup, so even though it’s pleat down, I didn’t expect it to be too juicy.
Soup/aspic
Dunlop offers two possibilities for the gelatinized soup that makes the buns juicy— a stock that uses gelatin from pig parts or a quick version using stock and gelatin leaves. The entire recipe is a lot of work, and challenging to be successful with, so I wouldn’t recommend spending all that time making pork jelly unless you happen to have spare parts parts lying around. I used a reduced stock made from a Thanksgiving turkey carcass and it had the same texture as pork jelly I’ve made in the past.
Dough
Dunlop calls for a mix of high and low gluten Chinese flour. Carolyn Phillips notes inconsistencies in Chinese flours and recommends a Korean brand instead: Deahan Polar Bear Brand. Their bread flour has 14% gluten and their all purpose has 10.5%. The blue one in my photo is high gluten (in korean, it says its for pizza and bread); green is low gluten (in Korean it says for dumpling and noodles).
The dough was easy to make, by hand, on a granite countertop. I had to add lots of flour to the surface to keep the dough from being sticky. It was very soft.
Meat
The recipe calls for 10oz of minced pork belly. I left my meat cleaver at home, so it took me over half an hour to cut the pork with a small santoku into 1/8 inch cubes. In retrospect, putting the slab of pork in the freezer for about an hour would have helped chopping a lot.
The meat filling uses 3 tbs of water that was flavored with ginger and scallions, presumably with solids discarded. This seemed like too much extra liquid.
Assembly
I used up all the dough and had filling leftover for one or two more buns. The buns fit snugly into an12" cast iron skillet.
Dunlop’s recipe says it makes 20 buns, and to use 30g of prepared dough and 25-30g of filling for each one. My finished dough ball was 500g, so something must be off in one of her instructions (20x30g=600g).
The filling melts as it sits at room temperature, so I’d recommend using maybe 1/4 at a time and keeping the rest in the fridge.
Sheng jian casserole
The finished product tasted good, and unlike failed XLB, everything was edible and enjoyed by guests. So, mission accomplished! But it went wrong in so many ways that it’s tough to nail down what to adjust in the future.
The pork didn’t stick together and the juice completely leaked out. Next time, I think I need to cut the pork more finely, maybe toss half in the food processor.
The buns, which I probably overcrowded, lifted from the pan before I steamed them, but stuck after steaming. They also for the most part stuck together. Next time, I’ll shake the pan while they steam.
So much steam came out of the pan that I had to clear the countertop. It looked like we were filming a Michael Jackson video.
The bottom of the buns were fluffy tufts, and the tops were thin. I wonder if I should have rolled out the dough like XLB— thick middles and thinner outer edges since they’ll be crimped up into balls, crimp side hitting the pan. Perhaps related, they seemed overcrowded.
On the upside, I have a ton of turkey gelatin leftover and, in other news, Dunlop’s simple recipe for cucumbers with tianmianjiang is a great snack and also works well with Korean radishes.
