Xiaolongbao are small dumplings that are also known as Shanghai Soup Dumplings. These dumplings are full of surprises when you bite into them and find that they’re filled with soup. It literally translates to mean small basket buns because they are traditionally steamed in bamboo baskets. Filled with pork and the soup broth, the meat is poached in the broth during the steaming process. You must eat these before the soup inside hardens, so they are best eaten served hot.
I went to The Hutong with some coworkers for a friend’s birthday. The Hutong is a cultural exchange center located in Beijing and they have lots of cooking class, workshops, educational programs and cultural experiences. I have been to The Hutong two times before for other events: a Chinese New Year Dinner and a Tastes of Thailand dinner. Both events have been a lot of fun. This was my first cooking class with The Hutong and I’m already looking into other cooking classes they offer.
The other events that I’ve been a part of have been in their main room, but this was my first time in their kitchen. The intimate setting had just enough room for 10 people to learn and cook.
For the dough, we started with flour. To the flour, we added some hot water and salt. Super simple.
Then it was time to mix until the dough forms. This was a messy process, but worth it in the end for sure!
Then it was time to take the dough out of the bowl, form a ball, and let it rest under a wet cloth so it wouldn’t dry out. It was very hot in the kitchen, so this was a very important step.
While the dough was resting, we started to work on the dipping sauce for the dumplings. This sauce was insanely good. So good, in fact, that I want to bottle it up and carry it with me so I always have some. Often when you go out to eat, they’ll have some options to make your own dipping sauce. But this combination of flavors was *chef’s kiss* perfect! Our sauce had black vinegar, sugar, soy sauce, fresh ginger, sesame oil and The Hutong’s homemade chili oil.
Then, it was time to work on the filling for the dumplings. We used pork, which is the traditional meat for these dumplings. To the pork, we added soy sauce, cooking wine, salt, white pepper, sesame oil, green onion and fresh ginger. Then we mixed this mixture until it was well mixed.
We were told that it was mixed just right when the spoon could stand up in the middle of the pork mixture. It had something to do with the fibers…but I didn’t hear the entire explanation for this.
Then it was time to form the dough into the small dumpling wrappers. We formed the dough into a ‘snake’ and then cut it into equal sized pieces. The process of rolling out the individual pieces was a lot of fun and I quickly found a groove with this process. You take the rolling pin and roll halfway across the dumpling wrapper, and then turn it slightly, and roll it halfway again, and repeat the process until the dumpling wrapper is about the size of your hand. Because of the process of rolling halfway across the dough, eventually a little bump will form in the middle. This is what will serve as the base of the dumpling.
The next part is what I found the most interesting. I love a good soup dumpling, but I never knew how the soup got into the dumpling. As it turns out, a soup broth is made and placed in the fridge to cool into a jelly. Then it is chopped up into small pieces. We did not do this part as it’s more time consuming, so this was prepared prior to the class for us. We added the jelly pieces to the pork mixture, so that it could be added to the dumplings. It doesn’t look the best at this stage, but the end result was delicious.
I didn’t get any pictures of the process of filling the dumplings, or the process of pinching the dumpling closed. But here are the first two dumplings I made! You can definitely tell that a beginner made these, but I was pretty proud of them!
And here are some more pictures of the finished dumplings. Each person made 14 dumplings, then they were cooked together and shared around the table.
Here you can see Yao, our cooking instructor, preparing to cook the dumplings, and then pan frying some of them. She steamed half of them, which is the traditional way to cook these dumplings. But she also pan fried half of them, so that we could taste both preparations. I actually prefer the pan fried dumplings because I like the crispy bottoms they get!
Then it was time to enjoy the fruits of our labor! We first had some cucumber salad that was prepared for us. I found that the cucumbers dipped in the dumpling dipping sauce that we made was the best way to enjoy them.
And then it was time for the dumplings! These are the steamed dumplings…
…and the pan fried dumplings.
And here is the aftermath of the very filling, and very delicious, dumplings!
I can’t recommend these dumplings enough! If you ever find xiaolongbao (soup dumplings) on a menu, try them! And though they are not as good as homemade, I’ve had some from Trader Joes before which aren’t too bad!
