Pork siu mai are one of the “Guangdong Big Three,” along with shrimp dumplings and steamed pork buns, a true staple of the original Cantonese dim sum tradition.
My brother and I and our spouses went on a Dim Sum vacation a few years ago to San Francisco, and just ate our way around the Dim Sum houses of the city. The Siu Mai was the benchmark of each restaurant — if you can’t do that right, nothing else matters.
It’s a lot more fun to make than Har Gow, because you can buy the wrappers in almost any grocery store, and they’re just easier all around.
If you’re all-in on this, the orange garnish on the top of superior Siu Mai is tobiko (flying fish roe) Chock Chin would have approved of going all-in. (Just saying.)
A step down from that is finely grated carrots, or shrimp.
Ingredients
- 6 ounces shrimp
- 1/2 cup peeled water chestnuts
- 1 pound ground pork
- 2 tablespoons light soy sauce
- 1 1/2 tablespoons Shaoxing rice wine
- 2 teaspoons sesame oil
- 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
- 2 tablespoons chopped ginger
- 1 green onion, finely chopped
- 1 egg white, lightly beaten
- 2 tablespoons cornstarch
- 30 square or round egg dumpling wrappers
Instructions
- Peel and devein the shrimp, squeeze out as much moisture as possible and then roughly chop.
- Blanch the water chestnuts for 1 minute, drop into cold water and then roughly chop.
- Combine the shrimp, water chestnuts and the remaining filling ingredients (everything except the wrappers) in a large bowl and stir until well-combined.
- Place 1 tablespoon of filling in the center of each wrapper. Form a circle with your thumb and forefinger and shape the dumpling, so that it forms a fat cylinder with an open top. Pat the top and bottom of the dumpling to create flat surfaces on either end.
- Steam the dumplings standing up in bamboo steamers on top of oiled paper punched with holes for 15 minutes. Serve with soy sauce or chili sauce for dipping.
Check out this video. This guy has a great accent. (I wonder if Chock Chin sounded like that…) The audio is a little sketchy but he does things the right way — including using pork belly and mincing it himself, and prepping the prawns by salting them. So watch it and just turn up the volume a little.