The Famed Ancient Chinese Soup Dumpling Secret is revealed for you here. You may read it if you like, but then we will then have to kill you!
If you have ever tried any of the Chinese delicacies generally known as ‘soup-dumplings’ or their (often) larger, and well-known cousins, Xiaolongbao, you have probably enjoyed the way that the steaming, liquid content squirts in your mouth when you bite into them. Quite possibly, it also occurred to you to wonder how on earth the cook gets the delicious broth into the dumplings in the first place…
Not long ago, when I featured the technique for making a Basic Chinese Pork Stock, I hinted at this ancient Chinese secret. If you haven’t guessed the answer yet, read on…
The Secret Revealed
Here are the ‘makings’ for a typical soup dumpling filling…
In the bowl, I have a pretty standard mixture of ground pork, chopped scallion, minced ginger and a little salt and pepper.
Next, moving clockwise, you can see a cup of a good, homemade pork stock that is so rich with leached dissolved protein that it has formed a stiff gel after being cooled.
This stock was made by the traditional method of cooking down pork with lots of skin, tendon, and bone, but you can also produce a similar effect by jellying a simpler broth using gelatin or agar-agar. I rather suspect that, nowadays, that is the way it is done in a lot of restaurants and in most commercially produced dumplings.
Finally, at the bottom left, you can see that a little of the gelled stock has been cut into cubes. It is THIS, that is the simple little trick underlying the Celebrated Chinese Soup Dumpling Secret
In order to properly incorporate the stock cubes into the dumpling filling mixture, it is advisable to have everything (including the bowl) slightly chilled ahead of time. If you fail to do this, you may find that your ‘soup’ starts to form before you even have the dumplings assembled.
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Assembling and wrapping the dumplings is no more difficult than making ‘non-soup’ varieties. I have chosen the standard Xiaolongbao fold here, but you are not limited to that, by any mans. You can try any dumpling shape that takes your fancy… although Shu Mai might not be wise 😊
Finished XiaoLongBao – Chinese Soup Dumpling
The secret to EATING soup-dumplings is to slide them onto a deep spoon and then puncture one side of the skin so that you can slurp the soup as it comes out… You need to be careful doing this as the broth can be super-hot when it squirts into your mouth! After that, you can eat the remaining skin and filling, dipping it into a sauce if you like.
Here is a plate I steamed and then finished off all by myself. I spooned a little chili oil and soy sauce over top of each before eating them, which is the way I usually do it.
If you look closely, you can see that the dumpling at the 9’oclock position has ripped, spilling its soup into the bowl. It happens sometimes…
Dumpling Paradise 👍👍👍😍😀