SOUP DUMPLINGS / XIAO LONG BAO (healthy recipes)

If you have ever eaten xiao long bao before, I know your face will lighten up by just seeing the words 🙂 For the few years I’ve lived in Singapore, I had been spoiled with wonderful xiao long bao from various Chinese restaurants. Thin skin and the soup gushes out when you take that first bite. To put it simply, it’s like eating a wonton with a soup inside the wrap 🙂 and hence the name…. soup dumplings.

I’ve tried the xiao long bao here at the restaurant in Minnesota, but it didn’t even meet half of the standards (sadly!!). So, that what drove me to attempt making my own from scratch. I didn’t cook as much or maybe I should say hardly cooked at all before moving to Minnesota. A single woman 😉 but I love to eat (since I was little girl. It’s in the genes!). So, I was always amazed by how they were able to have a soup inside a dumpling. Little did I know about cooking. After almost 5 years of cooking, I finally mustered up some guts to attempt making my own xiao long bao. It’s on my to-cook list. So how do you put the soup inside ? (silly question of mine). Well, you need a home-made rich chicken stock. Sorry, no short cut for this one, you can’t just go out there and get a canned chicken broth and put some gelatin to gel it 😉 (well, you can, but trust me, it’s not worth it!). When you made that chicken soup from scratch (with the meat, bones, and skin), you get a real rich stock from those cartilage-rich parts of the chicken. It makes the stock gelled when being chilled (but will melt when being heated. Boy..I love food science!). So, there you go! soup inside the dumpling 😉




Making your own xiao long bao at home really isn’t that intimidating. It’s just things that you need to prepare ahead and rolling out the skin to be thin and then wrapping/pleating them may not be perfect right from the start, but will get better as you do it more and more…40 soup dumplings from this recipe was enough practice to me 😉 and I’m happy to say I got very good xiao long bao.

To me the most important things to make good xiao long bao are:
1. Great soup
2. Thin wraps
3. The filling is important too, but the first two are more important to me to get them right

My husband couldn’t get enough of them and he was delighted when I told him I still have some in the freezer 😉

That delicious soup oozing out…

SOUP DUMPLINGS / XIAO LONG BAO (35-40 dumplings)

What you will need:
For the soup:

• 3½ lbs chicken wings (see note)
• 1-inch knob ginger
• 6 scallions (white part only, save the green for the filling)
• Salt to taste

For the filling:

• ⅓ lb of ground pork
• ⅓ lb of shrimp (peeled)
• 3 cloves garlic (peeled)
• 1 Tbsp of soy sauce
• 1 Tbsp of Chinese rice wine
• 3 tsp sugar
• Pinch of salt

For the wrap:

• 2 cups of all-purpose flour (and more for dusting)
• Start with ¾ cup of hot boiling water
• 1 tsp of salt

Other things you need:

Instructions:
TO DO A DAY BEFORE:

Preparing the soup:

1. Put all the ingredients for soup in a large pot, except for salt. Pour in cold water, enough to cover. Bring to a boil and then lower the heat and let it simmer for the next 3 hours. Strain the soup and discard everything else. Season with salt to your taste. Refrigerate for at least 8 hours. The soup will turn into a jelly-like consistency. You can easily scrap off the yellowish fatty layer off the soup too
Preparing the filling:

1. Place all the ingredients for filling in a food processor and process into a paste. Place in a mixing bowl, cover and place in the refrigerator until the next day
ON THE DAY

Making the wrap:

1. Place the flour in a large mixing bowl. Gradually add in the hot water and stir with a spoon. The hot water will help the gluten develop faster thus making the dough stretchy. The dough won't come together yet. Use your clean hand to knead the dough until it forms a non-sticky dough. Add more hot water as needed. Cover with damp cloth or plastic wrap and let it rest for 30 minutes
2. Dust your work surface with some flour. Roll the dough into a log and separate into 4 equal parts and then divide each part into 10 equal parts, and you'll have 40 mini doughs. Work with one dough at a time and keep the rest cover to prevent them from drying out. Roll the dough into about 4-inch circle, it should be thin, but not to the point of tearing apart. Place about ½ Tbsp of the jellied broth in the middle of the wrap, then followed by about 1 Tbsp of the filling. Create pleats around the edge of the wrap and then pinch them together and lightly twist to seal. Place them on a plate line with parchment paper and cover with damp towel and continue to work with the rest. Depends on how many you want to steam, prepare the steamer with hot boiling water. Place a piece of parchment paper on the steamer and gently place the soup dumplings on top of it and let them steam for 5 minutes on high heat. Freeze the rest if you are not going to cook them on the same day. It may take about 10 minutes to steam on high heat if you freeze them (do not thaw, go straight from freezer to steamer to cook)
3. Eat with a spoon so you won't miss the soup. Usually I bite a tiny bit and then slowly suck the soup out and then eat the whole dumpling 🙂

Notes:
You can mix in other parts of chicken as well, but wings produced more gelatinous type soup. If you can find chicken feet, that's even better 😉

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