Vegtetarian xiao long bao (soup dumplings) edit
Difficult
Ingredients
Skins
- 300g of flour
- 160 ml of warm water
- pinch of salt
Filling
- 1 package of beyond meat ground
- 2-3 finely chopped green onions
- 2 ish cups of finely grated cabbage
- a few pinches of sugar
- a few pinches of msg
- soy sauce to taste
- tablespoon of chinese black vinegar
- sesame oil to taste
- two tablespoons of milk solids (skimmed off of ghee)
Soup base/aspic
- 3 green onions
- handful of sichuan peppercorns and white peppercorns
- knob of ginger
- 1-2 cloves of garlic (keep it light)
- small amount of soy sauce and chinese black vinegar
- shittake mushrooms
- homemade veggie broth
- gelatin or agar agar
Instructions
- Make the aspic at least three hours ahead of when you wish to start making dumplings. To do this, simmer all soup base ingredients in a good homemade veggie stock for around 45 minutes. Other spices or some form of fat can be added to taste if the broth doesn’t have enough umami.
- Once you are satisfied with the flavor of the stock, dissolve agar agar or gelatin (only if you’re a lax vegetarian lol) in some warm water and then mix in to your soup base in a shallow dish. Refrigerate until you have a soup jello.
- Mix all filling ingredients along with small cubes of aspic until you have a homogenous mixture. Refrigerate until you are ready to start folding dumplings
- To make the dough, mix the flour with warm water and salt until homogenous and then let it rest in a covered bowl for ten minutes.
- To make skins, roll out chunks of dough through a pasta maker until you reach the 6th knob and cut circles with a large glass/circular cookie cutter.
- Place a small amount of filling in the center of each skin and pleat into the soup dumpling shape.
- Steam for 8-10 minutes, depending on dumpling size.
Notes
- Generally you want to try to have enough aspic that your filling is 1/3 to 1/2 soup jelly to meat. You will want more than you think if you want really soupy dumplings, because the filling and skins will absorb some of the soup.
- The good news with making vegetarian dumplings is that you can taste the meat filling for seasoning as you go, which I would highly recommend to make sure it is adequatly salty and balanced when it comes to components like sesame oil and green onions.
- adding leftover milk solids from making ghee or just some plain ghee goes a long way in increasing the dumpling’s richness
- unless you have been making dumpling skins for years or have a pasta machine to roll them out for you I do not recommend trying to make them at home. This recipie is already annoyingly time consuming
- that being said, the good part of making skins yourself is size control. I recommend making them slightly larger than you think you’ll need to make your life easier when folding the dumplings.