How to Wrap Sui Mai 燒賣包法

Time to wrap some sui mai 燒賣!  We have just posted our recipe on homemade sui mai, those iconic Chinese dim sum dumpling treats.  Now we have some tips and tricks for how to wrap sui mai 燒賣包法.

We had a few hiccups with the sui mai wrapping and wanted to share both the hiccups and how we fixed them.  

Vegetarian Plant Based Wontons 植物肉餛飩

Wontons are Chinese boiled dumplings, slippery chewy meat and veggie filled dumplings that are just the perfect combo bite of yummilicious food.  When I was a little girl I could eat two whole large plates of my Grandma's homemade wontons!  It's one of those 'you just can't eat one' kind of foods.  

Recently, inspired by all the plant based meat products coming out in the market, we decided to try to make plant based vegetarian wontons!  Our Vegetarian Plant Based Wontons 植物肉餛飩 are simple to make, stuffed with plant based mince and an assortment of veggies that add flavor and texture.  It's a yummilicious and satisfying alternative to the traditional meat filled wontons.

Chinese Spiral Flaky Pastry Mooncake 千層紫薯酥

The Chinese way of making flaky pastry, also known as Huaiyang Pastry 淮揚酥皮, is the bomb!  You start with a basic layered dough that produces a wonderfully light and delicate flaky pastry.  This basic dough can be rolled out and wrapped in three different ways to produce different pastry skins.   

In the first method the layers are hidden, only showing after the pastry is opened (see our Chinese Flaky Pastry with Lotus Seed Paste 白蓮蓉酥餅 recipe).  

The second way exposes the flaky layers.  We wanted to try something alternative for this year's Mid Autumn Festival 中秋節 so we used the exposed layers method to make this truly elegant Chinese Spiral Flaky Pastry Mooncake 千層紫薯酥, yummiliciously stuffed with a lush soft purple sweet potato filling and a hidden heart of tender white mochi.  

How to Wrap a Mooncake 月餅皮做法

Have you ever wondered how to get that homemade mooncake skin as thin and even as possible?  With machines it is very easy, obviously, but when hand pressing mooncakes at home it can be quite tricky.  If you're not careful you'll end up with some sides thick and some sides thin.  Uggh...not a pretty sight.  I know that there is a 'professional' hand method to make wrap mooncakes but my clumsy hands haven't really mastered it yet.  

However, as we really love making homemade, hand pressed mooncakes, we have developed a 'cheat', so to speak, our own unique easy method of wrapping the mooncake, whether for snow skin mooncakes or traditional baked mooncakes, that produces a a thin even skin on all sides of the mooncake.

Snow Skin Custard Mooncake 奶皇冰皮月餅

This lovely hand pressed cake is a very popular recent incarnation of the traditional Chinese mooncake, the Custard Mooncake 奶皇月餅, which is actually a repurposing of a traditional Cantonese dim sum favorite, the Custard Bun 奶皇包, a sweet bread bun filled with luscious soft and sweet custard filling.  

An enterprising chef at the fabulous Peninsula Hotel decided to tuck the creamy custard filling into a traditional mooncake and created the first of these 30 some years ago and since then they have become more and more popular.  (And expensive!)  

We wanted to make some custard mooncakes for Mid-Autumn Festival 中秋節 but decided to put a twist on it and wrap the creamily delicious custard inside a delicately soft rice flavored mochi like wrapping to make Snow Skin Custard Mooncakes, or 奶皇冰皮月餅.  OMGosh...yummilicious and light as a snowflake!

Mini Crystal Red Bean Zong Zi 水晶紅豆粽子

It's almost that time of the year for the beating drums of the Dragon Boat races and the deliciously tantalizing aroma of zong zi 粽子 floating in the air: it's time for Duanwu Dragon Boat Festival 端午節!  

For me, this time of the year is always filled with thoughts of my dearest Grandma 奶奶, busy and bossy in her kitchen, making all kinds of special traditional treats for us that no one else bothered to learn how to make.  Except me, I guess, I finally did some learning myself on these things and always have her in my mind and heart as I bustle away in my own little kitchen.  

So it is that every Dragon Boat Festival I always try to find the time to make two kinds of zong zi just as Grandma made, one kind the savory pork and salted duck egg zong zi 肉粽子  and the other kind the sweet red bean zong zi 紅豆沙粽子.  This year I thought I would try adding a twist to this traditional combo and thus made these Mini Crystal Red Bean Zong Zi, or 水晶紅豆粽子, a light and delightfully chewy, beautifully translucent version of the traditional zong zi.

How to Wrap Jau Gok Peanut Puff Dumplings 炸油角包法

We just finished posting on how to make those delightful Chinese New Year's sweet treats, the Jau Gok Peanut Puff Dumpling, or 炸油角.  This little dumpling is really easy to make and easy to wrap as well if you use a dumpling press of some sort.  But...if you want to go all traditional and hard core and wrap by hand, the wrapping is a bit more tricky, so we decided to do a quick post on How to Wrap Jau Gok Peanut Puff Dumplings 炸油角 by hand.

Jau Gok Peanut Puff Dumpling 炸油角 / 炸角仔

This post is inspired by the stories that have come in from our dear readers that spoke of their fond memories of the making and eating of the traditional Chinese New Year Treat, Jau Gok Peanut Puff Dumpling, 油角 or 角仔, also known as Tim Gok or Gok Jai.  This sweet treat is especially made by grandmas and grandpas, mothers and fathers for the Chinese New Year festivities as snacks to munch on and to share with the many Chinese New Year guests expected.  

Another good reason to make and serve these crunchy munchies is that the distinctive shape of the Jau Gok is evocative of the gold ingots that the Chinese used for centuries as money.  So you could make and eat piles of golden ingots, what better way to start off the Year of the Monkey!?  

How to Wrap Tong Yuan Rice Dumplings 湯圓的做法

We thought that since Tong Yuan Rice Dumplings take serious mastery skills to make (joking!), we should do a how to wrap the tong yuan post with lots of helpful photos.  And since 媽媽's (that's me!) hands were encrusted in sticky white dough, my little girl helped me to take a lot the photos!  So here it is: How to Wrap Tong Yuan Rice Dumplings 湯圓的做法! by the good folks at The Hong Kong Cookery. (That's us!)

How to Fold a Chinese Dumpling 鍋貼包法

Published: 2013-10-06

While in the midst of writing my Chinese Potsticker Pork Dumpling 鍋貼 recipe, it occurred to me (and my mom reminded me) that some folks may not know how to fold the chinese dumpling.  There are many ways actually, some more complicated and some more simple.  

I will just show you the way that I usually make my chinese potsticker pork dumplings.  It looks hard at first but once you get the hang of it it's quite simple and, importantly, quite beautiful to look at and eat.