Dinner · 150 min · chinese

Soup Dumplings

This is the kind of Chinese dinner you’ll make on repeat — ground pork and rich pork stock, 150 minutes, big payoff.

✓ USDA-verified nutrition data

Ingredients

• 1 lb Ground pork
• 2 cups Rich pork stock
• 2 tbsp Gelatin
• 2 cups All-purpose flour
• 1 tbsp Fresh ginger
• 2 Scallions
• 2 tbsp Light soy sauce
• 1 tbsp Shaoxing wine

Steps

1. The day before (or morning of), bloom the gelatin in cold water, dissolve it into the simmering stock with the ginger, and chill until firmly set. This aspic is the “soup” — it melts back to liquid inside the sealed dumpling as it steams.
2. Knead the flour with 3/4 cup hot water until smooth, rest 30 minutes. Hot-water dough rolls thin without springing back and stays tender after steaming — cold-water dough fights you.
3. Dice the set aspic and mix with the pork, scallions, soy, wine, sesame oil, and white pepper, stirring one direction until tacky. Keep the filling cold; warm filling melts the aspic before it ever sees the steamer.
4. Roll wrappers thin — thinner than regular dumplings, nearly translucent at the edges. Fill with a tablespoon of filling and pleat 12 to 14 times, twisting the top closed. Thin wrappers plus generous filling is the whole gamble of xiao long bao.
5. Line a bamboo steamer with cabbage leaves or parchment, space the dumplings apart, and steam over boiling water 8 minutes. Serve with black vinegar and ginger slivers — and eat carefully: nibble, sip the soup, then eat. That ritual is half the pleasure.

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